Global Trade: How Goods Travel the World: Second Grade Social Studies
Global trade is the international exchange of goods, raw materials, and agricultural crops between nations, connected by an intricate worldwide transportation network.
What Is Global Trade?
Look around your classroom or home. Your sneakers might have been stitched in Vietnam, the banana you ate for breakfast grew on a plantation in Costa Rica, your wooden pencil was manufactured in Germany, and the computer screen displaying your lessons contains microchips made in Taiwan. How did all these everyday items arrive in your hands? They traveled across vast oceans and continents through global trade.
+-------------------------------------------------------------+
| THE GLOBAL TRADE HIGHWAY |
| |
| [ PRODUCER NATION ] |
| Grows coffee beans / builds electronics |
| | |
| v |
| [ TRANSPORT NETWORK ] |
| Cargo ships, cargo airplanes, freight trains, semi-trucks |
| | |
| v |
| [ CONSUMER NATION ] |
| Arrives at local supermarket / neighborhood store shelf |
+-------------------------------------------------------------+
Imports and Exports: The Twin Wheels of Trade
Every country sells goods it has in abundance and buys goods it cannot easily produce at home. These two flows of commerce are called imports and exports.
+-----------------------------+-------------------------------+
| EXPORTS | IMPORTS |
| (Goods Sent OUT) | (Goods Brought IN) |
+-----------------------------+-------------------------------+
| Products grown or made | Products grown or made in |
| inside a country and sold | foreign countries and bought |
| to other nations across | by our country for our use |
+-----------------------------+-------------------------------+
What Is an Export?
An export is a good or resource produced inside your home country and shipped out to be sold in foreign markets. The word export begins with "ex," like the word exit. For example, American farmers grow massive harvests of soybeans and corn, and American airplane companies build commercial jetliners; when these goods are sold to France or Japan, they are American exports.
What Is an Import?
An import is a good or resource produced in a foreign country and shipped in across international borders to be purchased by domestic consumers. The word import begins with "im," like the word in. Because coffee trees only grow in warm tropical climates, the United States imports coffee beans from Brazil and Colombia.
How Goods Travel: Modern Freight Transportation
Moving billions of tons of cargo across oceans and continents requires four major types of transportation working in harmony.
+---------------------+-------------------+-------------------+
| TRANSPORT METHOD | IDEAL CARGO | SPEED & RANGE |
+---------------------+-------------------+-------------------+
| Giant Cargo Ships | Heavy containers, | Slow speed, |
| (Container Vessels) | cars, grain, oil | thousands of miles|
| Air Cargo Planes | Fresh flowers, | Very fast speed, |
| | medicines, phones | expensive per lb |
| Freight Trains | Coal, lumber, | Moderate speed, |
| | heavy chemicals | cross-continent |
| Semi-Trucks | Pallets of food | Flexible direct |
| | to store docks | door-to-door |
+---------------------+-------------------+-------------------+
Giant Cargo Container Ships
About ninety percent of all global trade travels aboard massive container ships. These metal vessels are longer than three football fields! They carry thousands of standardized steel boxes called shipping containers. These ships cross the Pacific and Atlantic Oceans, navigating through canals like the Panama Canal and Suez Canal to connect distant ports.
+=====================================+
| [CONTAINER] [CONTAINER] [CONTAINER] |
| [CONTAINER] [CONTAINER] [CONTAINER] |
.----+-------------------------------------+----.
\ CARGO CONTAINER SHIP (Crosses Oceans) /
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Intermodal Transportation: The Shipping Container Revolution
The invention of the standardized metal shipping container transformed world commerce. The exact same steel box can be lifted by a giant crane off a cargo ship in Los Angeles harbor, placed directly onto a railroad flatcar traveling across mountains to Chicago, and then transferred onto the back of a semi-truck trailer to be delivered right to your neighborhood grocery warehouse without ever opening the doors!
Air Cargo: Speed for Urgent Needs
When items are perishable or urgently needed—such as lifesaving vaccines, delicate fresh flowers, or the newest smartphones—companies pay for air cargo transport. Cargo jets fly between continents in hours rather than the weeks required by ocean ships.
Why Do Countries Trade?
No single country possesses every natural resource, climate type, and manufacturing specialty:
Climate limitations: You cannot grow pineapples or cacao trees in snowy Canada; Canada must trade with tropical nations. Natural resource deposits: Saudi Arabia has vast crude oil reserves beneath its desert, while Chile possesses massive copper mines in its mountains. Specialized technology and skills: Switzerland specializes in precision watchmaking, while Germany is famous for high-performance automotive engineering.
Exercises and Review
Exercise 1: Explain the difference between an import and an export and give an example of each for the United States.
Exercise 1 Solution: An export is a good or service produced inside a home country and sold to buyers in another nation, while an import is a good brought into a country from a foreign producer to be used by domestic consumers. An example of a United States export is commercial airplanes or soybeans shipped to overseas buyers. An example of a United States import is fresh bananas or coffee beans shipped from tropical South American countries where those crops can grow naturally.
Exercise 2: Describe how a single shipping container can travel from an overseas factory to a local neighborhood store using three different modes of transportation.
Exercise 2 Solution: A metal shipping container is packed with goods at an overseas factory and loaded onto a giant cargo container ship that crosses the ocean to an American port city. At the dock, a giant crane lifts the container off the ship and places it onto a railroad flatcar, where a freight train pulls it across the continent. Finally, the container is transferred onto the trailer bed of a semi-truck, which drives it on highways directly to the loading dock of a neighborhood department store.