Trade theories Assignment Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1500 words

Trade theories - Assignment Example The goods that are primarily exported by Syria are petroleum products, crude oil, minerals, wheat cotton fibre, clothing, fruits, vegetables, meat and live animals. The imports of Syria consists of transport equipments, livestock and food, paper, chemicals, machinery, electric power machinery, metal and metal products, chemical products and yarn. The import partners of Syria are China, Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Turkey, UAE, Russia, Lebanon and Italy (Younes 11-13). The trading partners and their concerned good and services gives a picture of Syria’s trade conditions and trade relations with its partners. Syria has enhanced trade relations with Iraq by reopening pipelines for the export of oil. Syria also benefitted from economic policies implemented by China. Syria maintains a trading relation with India by importing wheat from it. Syria’s geographical closeness with Europe has been quite beneficial. The country was able to serve the huge customer base of Europe (Russett 360-379). Syria’s trade history reveals that the country always had import figures that were almost double the export figures. But both the import and export had similar growth trends. The imports and exports increased at a slow pace over time. This led to worsening of the balance of trade position of Syria. This trade patterns were seen before the 1970s. But after the 1970s, trade patterns started improving. There was a rapid expansion in the import and export figures since 1970s. In the 1980s, the trade imbalance widened further. Syria also started taking various measures concerning the budget and foreign exchange reserve. Syria started taking advantage of the higher revenues from oil in the 1990s. Finally in the beginning of 2011, Syria recorded a surplus in balance of trade (â€Å"Syria Balance of Trade†). The figure below gives some idea of the movements in balance of trade over the time and also shows Syria’s favorable trade conditions that was prevailing at the ons et of 2011. The