what are the strong American exports?

the one that comes to my mind is military equipment.

what are our chief exports, and to whom do we export them?

You beat me to it.

do we export jobs? yes/no

Congress recently tried to pass a law to require that 40% of all us military contracts be built in the US. They failed. The corperations balked becase they were aonly tooled to proced no more than 8% of the contracts here in the US.

I work for a shipping line, and seems like I'm always seeing "synthetic resin" going to Europe and Asia, especially Asia


I have no idea WTF it is, though :)

Whole trees is I remeber corectly. They go to saw mills outside the US of A.

is about the biggest.

Surplus Alaskan oil that can't find refinery or storpage space is exported.

Forest products, machine tools, construction equipment, grain. Chemicals, and chemical production equipment.

Some high-tech stuff.

And, yes, weapons. We may still be the biggest arms dealer, although a lot of that dried up with the Cold War.

we export that all over the world....

It is kind of hard to find data on just what are America’s top exports. I have searched before. This page breaks the exports down by category. Hope it helps.
Main page
http://www.census.gov/foreign-trade/Press-Release/current_press_release/press.html

clips from this page
http://www.census.gov/foreign-trade/Press-Release/current_press_release/exh7.txt


Foods, feeds, and beverages

Soybeans
Corn
Wheat
Fish and shellfish


Industrial supplies and materials

Petroleum products, other
Chemicals-organic
Plastic materials
Iron and steel products, other
Precious metals, other

!!!!Hair, waste materials!!!!

Capital goods, except automotive

Semiconductors
Computer accessories
Electric apparatus
Measuring, testing, control instruments
Generators, accessories

Consumer goods

Artwork, antiques, stamps, etc.
Records, tapes, and disks
Pharmaceutical preparations
Tobacco, manufactured
Toys/games/sporting goods

the American dollar

...but I was wondering about "durable goods" or things which have value apart from voodoo economics. :)

thank you all, btw..for the serious and silly answers.

:* :* :*

Believe it or not, our number three export to China is our garbage (I don't think that they included jobs anywhere in the list). Other countries buy our garbage in bulk also.

Apparently we throw away a lot of quality recyclables, especially our paper. Countries like China buy our garbage, recycle it, build things like cell phones out of it, then sell it back to us for a nice little profit.

It's nice to learn that somebody recycles our garbage. I always wondered why "garbage mining" isn't an industry here.

I keep hearing about how uneconomical recycling is and that lots of communities are wasting money collecting and recycling some items.

IF this were true... how could China afford to SHIP our traxh over there just to recycle it and ship it back to us?

It can't just be labor costs, can it?

Exports a lot of high end Bikes to Europe.

http://www.cannondale.com/

I always objected to the fact that Cannondale in their European models (but not Their Models for sale in the US) have the following:
1. On Touring Model, you can get a Nexus Generator in its front hub.
2. On the "Street" models a build in bike lock is offered (years ago a combination seat, lock was also offers, but only in Europe NOT the USA).

or whatever it is when a company goes bankrupt?

I heard they were going out of business after they made a failed attempt to get into the motorcylcle business

But the Bicycle part of the business is still profitable, as are its accesories (Mostly panniers, saddlebags to your non-cyclists).

Under its reorganzations it has emerged from Chapter 11. The Motor Cycles assets stayed with the old "Cannondale" Company, and will be sold off (if anyone wants it). The bicycle part is now owned by "Pegasus Partners II, L.P., a private equity investment firm based in Greenwich, Connecticut".

So Cannondale is still in business, and selling its bicycles hand over fist.

Cannondale's Corporate history:
http://www.cannondale.com/company/history.html

Back when I was in graduate school about 6-8 years ago the biggest exports from our country were food, in particular grain stuffs and cultural/entertainment products. I seem to recall that those 2 combined made up something near a trillion dollars of positive number on our current account balance. As to the where part of your question the food tends to go Europe and Asia mostly, and the entertainment goes all over.

Oh, and the resins mentioned above are used for making all manner of plastics and other polimer based products including stuff like Teflon(tm).

forgot about that one.

Action movies, in fact, since comedy doesn't translate well from one culture to another.

so Ahnuld the product has been sustaining our economy for years, huh?

where are the best sources to find out about honest figures for the balance of trade...exports v. imports..

our exports v. other nations'??

As of about 2 years ago.

Exported to the entire planet.

How does this work with multinational companies?

Let's say I work for company A making widgets as their end product. The bottom of my widget is made by a company in Illinois. The top of my widget is made in Indonesia. I make the middle and do all the assembly.

Company A moves their production facility to China and I hit the UE line. They still source the top and bottom of the widget from the same places (Illinois and Indonesia).

WalMart down the road from my UE office sells those same widgets that are now made in China.
Is that widget considered an import to the US?

Take it one further and say that company A moved it's corporate office to Bermuda. Again, would the widget be considered an import?

Trying to understand how all this works, especially with regards to the trade deficit.

if company A moved its corporate office to Bermuda, but that company has been an American company, it would still be an American country.

the law at this time allows Company A to move its headquarters, even if only in name, to Bermuda in order to dodge taxes.

again, if Company A is an American company (i.e. its incorporation papers were filed in, say, Deleware-- a famously pro-corporate incorporation haven) then the product which is composed of various parts made in various places is considered an American product, not an import.

says made in China would have zero effect on the trade deficit because it would be considered made by US based company and consumed in the US. Would that be correct?

Any product that is shipped from China to the US and sold in the US contributes to the trade defecit.

The US based company probably had the product made by a subcontractor in China that shipped the product to the US.

BMWs made in Alabama and sold in the US are considered American made products.

America's main export is dollars. I know this sounds silly but in essence it is true. The $500 billion trade deficit, that being the amount we buy over what we sell, dwarfs the amount earned by any one item or class of items we sell. (Maybe not ag products, I'm not sure. Sorry)

So the point is that those dollars we send out to the world are the biggest export. Now during the 90's these dollars flowed back to Wall St. mostly, to buy, and inflate, our financial assets, ie. stocks and bonds.

That has been slowing ever since the stock market fell, and now the decline continues as the dollar falls. THe new method for foreigners finding dollars in their bank accounts is to exchange them for their own currencies, the dollars ending up in their respective central banks. (I am speaking mainly of Japan and China here, the big dogs in the trade deficit) The central banks in turn use the dollars to buy up our Treasury bonds, which means they are lending us the money to fill the deficit.

This is of course an absurd situation and it can't last forever. However saying when it will end is impossible. Just remember that dollars, paper, is our main export.

The whole thing has as much to do with free markets and capitalism as the USSR's last 5 year plan.