The United States of America is the World's largest economy and the largest international supplier and consumer of a wide range of goods and services. It is Strategically situated with the Atlantic Ocean to the east, the burgeoning Pacific Rim to the west, and the rapidly awakening economies of Latin America to the south, and maintains close ties with Industrial Canada to the north a it has been dominant economy in the world since World War II. The US has been coping with a maturing economy after its prolonged postwar period of rapid growth.

The US is an intriguing market and one well worth investigating from a number of perspectives. For buyers, the US can offer a wide variety of raw materials and intermediate, high-tech, and consumer products at a wide range of quality and price points. It is a major producer of electronics and machinery, of transportation products - in particular, automotive and aircraft products minerals and timber products, and agricultura products and processed foods, among many others. So far-reaching is the US economy that its top export - electrical machinery-accounts for less than 8 per cent of total exports. The US is also the world's top service economy, offering many Innovative technical and professional services that are either unsurpassed or simply unavailable elsewhere.

From the seller's perspective, the US is also the world's top importer, a hungry consumer of a wide range of goods, from raw materials to goods of the lowest to the highest state-of-the-art technology, but most especially of components and finished consumer goods. US consumers are among the World's most affluent. Always receptive to foreign products, the US is likely to become an even more avid buyer of outside goods and services as the new World economy develops.

For investors, the US remains the world's broadest and deepest financial market. And for investors interested in establishing new firms or in acquiring existing operations, the US has one of the most liberal foreign investment frameworks in the world. Home to some of the world's dominant corporate giants, the US has never relied on state
run operations to build its influence. And although the US is a highly regulated operating environment, in recent years it has deregulated many of its industries to a significant degree, opening even more opportunities.

People in the US are caught in a fluid situation in which the old principles no longer hold out the same promise of solutions to current problems, yet the next step remains unclear. This is an environment that requires great care and alertness, but it also offers many options and opportunities. Probably more so than at any time in the past, the US is a complex and challenging - as well as compelling - place in which to do business.

The United States has the world's pre-eminent economy. It produces nearly one-third of global output on an unadjusted measure and more than one-fifth of production in terms of the complicated but more accurate purchasing power parity. This economic might provides the country with the resources to be the dominant political and military' actor on the world stage.