The United States as a Market 
289 
vania and other states have coal; and the northeastern states have all 
sorts of manufactured goods. Every state supplies something, and 
the facilities for communication are so good that products can easily 
be carried from one state to another. In fact, this exchange of goods is 
s0 extensive that the value of the domestic trade of the United States 
alone is estimated to be equal to the entire foreign trade of all countries. 
Imports from Foreign Countries. In spite of the fact that the do- 
mestic trade of the United States has a value of perhaps forty or fifty 
billion dollars a year, this country imports three or four billion dol- 
lars’ worth of goods each year, and exports a still larger amount. 
There are at least five chief reasons why the country imports goods 
instead of producing them: 
(1) The United States lacks a suitable climate for some products. 
(2) It lacks certain mineral deposits. 
(8) Our labor costs are high. 
(4) We lack the skill necessary to produce certain goods abundantly 
and cheaply. 
'5) The home supply of some goods is not great enough to meet the 
home demand. 
HOW OUR CLIMATIC CONDITIONS EXPLAIN CERTAIN IMPORTS 
Since the United States does not extend into tropical regions, it has 
to import all products that require a continuously warm climate. 
Hence coffee, rubber, Manila hemp (abac), sisal, cacao, and tropical 
fruits and nuts are brought into the country in great quantities. South- 
ern Brazil sends most of our coffee; the Amazon basin, considerable 
rubber; the Philippines send Manila hemp; Yucatan, the sisal; 
Ecuador and the Amazon basin, most of the cacao; and the West 
Indies and Central America, the tropical fruits and nuts. Thus, with 
the exception of hemp, most of our chief needs for tropical products 
are supplied by fairly near neighbors. But if we were to trace back to 
its source every tropical product consumed in the United States, we 
should be taken into every land within the torrid zone. 
HOW THE LACK OF CERTAIN MINERAL DEPOSITS ACCOUNTS FOR OTHER 
IMPORTS 
Nature has been generous in endowing the United States with great 
quantities of many kinds of minerals. A few of the less important ones, 
however, are lacking. The chief of these are tin, precious stones. ni- 
trate of soda. and potash.