Kidd on Foreign Trade (Classic Reprint)

Excerpt from Kidd on Foreign Trade

Foreign trade and domestic trade are fundamentally alike. In both there is an exchange of values. In the case of foreign trade, however, this matter of exchange usually becomes a much more complicated process than is true of commerce carried on within our own boundary lines. There are more complex problems of competition, transportation, banking, credit, language, commercial law, adjustment to special market demands, national and racial prejudices, etc., which justify a specialized study of foreign trade.

Broad scope of the subject. - In entering the field of foreign commerce, the student is at once impressed with its practically limitless extent. It sweeps a very broad horizon of time and space. From the standpoint of time, the history of international commerce leads us into the remote past, to the very beginnings of commercial relations between tribes. From this early period, to the rise and development of the foreign commerce of the United States, England, Germany, France, and Japan, many dramatic changes have altered the currents of trade in the swiftly moving stream of time. A study of the facts and causes of these mighty changes not only opens up an interesting phase of economic history, but also gives a valuable background to the student of the pres ent situation of world trade.

From the standpoint of geographic scope, the student of foreign trade is bewildered with the fact that he is attempting to analyze vast forces which are not local, but international and world wide. While it must be said that a study of such proportions at once challenges interest, at the same time it suggests the difficulties which we shall encounter.

It is very obvious from this brief statement of the wide dimensions of foreign trade as a field of study that anything like complete analysis is not attempted in a work of this kind. Only certain of the outstanding phases of the export trade problems of the United States at the present time are outlined in this volume.

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