Structure of international trade.

International trade is nothing more than a process of buying and selling, which is carried out between sellers, buyers, intermediaries from different countries. The structure of international trade includes the import and export of goods, and the relationship between them is called the trade balance.

The commodity structure of international trade is changing and is subject to the influence of scientific and technological revolution, as well as the deepening of the division of labor. At the moment, the most important thing in international trade is the production that belongs to the manufacturing industry. Equipment, machinery, chemicals, vehicles - these are the types of products whose share is growing particularly rapidly. And the trade in high-tech products and science-intensive goods is developing very dynamically. This encourages the exchange of services between countries, especially those that have a communicative, production, financial, credit and scientific and technical nature. World trade in goods for industrial purposes is stimulated by trade in services (leasing, consulting, information-computing, engineering).

The structure of international trade indicates the ratio in the total volume of any parts, depending on the selected characteristic. The general structure of international trade shows the ratio of imports and exports in shares or percentages. In money terms, the share of exports is always less than the share of imports. And in the physical volume, this ratio is equal to one. The commodity structure of international trade shows what proportion of these or those goods in its total volume.

Some goods do not participate at all in the world commodity turnover. Therefore, they are all subdivided into non-tradable and tradable. The first group is those that for various reasons (strategic importance for the country, non-competitiveness) do not move between different countries. And the first group is goods that can move freely.

When the structure of international trade is characterized by specialists, two groups of goods stand out: finished goods and raw materials.

The geographical structure of international trade is characterized by the distribution of trade in the directions of various commodity flows. At present, the situation is that the countries that are developed industrially and have a more developed economy, are the most traded with each other. Developing countries are oriented to the markets of those countries that are industrially developed. 25 percent of the world trade turnover - this is their share in world trade. Recently, an increasingly important role is played by countries called new industrial (Asian), but oil-exporting countries lose their importance in world trade.

International trade has different forms. By the number of objects, it is one-and multi-disciplinary. There is also a division according to the number of parties to bilateral and multilateral. In terms of territorial coverage, world trade is divided into local, regional, interregional and global. There is also a division of the structure of ties into the intra-firm, inter-industry, intersectoral, horizontal, vertical and mixed.

Currently, international trade has an important role in the economic development of many countries, as well as regions and the world community. Foreign trade is now considered the most powerful factor of economic growth. And now many countries depend heavily on international commodity exchange. Such a dynamic growth in international trade is influenced by such factors as the internationalization of production, the development of the division of labor between countries, the activities and existence of transnational corporations of TNCs, as well as the scientific and technological revolution.