Trade
Thanks to petroleum exports, Venezuela usually posts a trade surplus. In recent years, nontraditional (i.e., nonpetroleum) exports have been growing rapidly but still constitute only about a quarter of total exports. The United States is Venezuela's leading trade partner. During 2002, the United States exported $4.4 billion in goods to Venezuela, making it the 25th-largest market for the U.S. Including petroleum products, Venezuela exported $15.1 billion in goods to the U.S., making it its 14th-largest source of goods. Venezuela opposes the proposed Free Trade Agreement of the Americas.
Since 1998 People's Republic of China-Venezuela relations have seen an increasing partnership between the government of the Venezuelan president Hugo Chávez and the People's Republic of China. Sino-Venezuelan trade was less than $500m per year before 1999, and reached $7.5bn in 2009, making China Venezuela's second-largest trade partner, and Venezuela China's biggest investment destination in Latin America. Various bilateral deals have seen China invest billions in Venezuela, and Venezuela increase exports of oil and other resources to China.
Read more about this topic: Economy Of Venezuela
Famous quotes containing the word trade:
“International relations is security, it’s trade relations, it’s power games. It’s not good-and-bad. But what I saw in Yugoslavia was pure evil. Not ethnic hatred—that’s only like a label. I really had a feeling there that I am observing unleashed human evil ...”
—Natasha Dudinska (b. c. 1967)
“People run away from the name subsidy. It is a subsidy. I am not afraid to call it so. It is paid for the purpose of giving a merchant marine to the whole country so that the trade of the whole country will be benefitted thereby, and the men running the ships will of course make a reasonable profit.... Unless we have a merchant marine, our navy if called upon for offensive or defensive work is going to be most defective.”
—William Howard Taft (1857–1930)
“And there is no trade or employment but the young man following it may become a hero.”
—Walt Whitman (1819–1892)