The US economy is the biggest in the world. The USA is responsible for 30 per cent of the world's industrial production and about 20 per cent of the world's agricultural production. The USA is developing practically in all fields using widely the advances of science and technology. It is a member of the G-7 countries and newly of the NAFTA (the North American Free Trade Agreement), which will enable it to expand all over the North American continent.
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The
country is enormously rich in raw materials. It ranks first in the world's production of mica (49%), molybdenum (45%),
natural petrol (41%), kaolin (33%), natural phosphates (28%), salt (20%) and gypsum (16%).
It occupies the second place in e.g. natural gas (24%), sulphur (19%), coal (18%) and oil
(14%). There are also the deposits of copper, lead, uranium, gold and mercury in the USA.
Except for a few raw materials it is practically self-sufficient, though it imports some
of them from abroad mainly because of their lower price on the market.
The USA is the
leading country in agriculture.
The arable land covers 20.7% of this vast
country. The high effectiveness of the American agricultural system is shown in the fact
that only 2.4% of the population work on about 2 million farms, which is sufficient not
only feed the whole country but a great deal of agricultural production is exported. E.g.
the production of soya and maize (called corn in America) makes up about half of the whole
world production. Other important agricultural products are wheat, cotton, tobacco, fruit,
vegetable and cattle breeding. America exports wheat and many other agricultural products.
The USA
is also the leading industrial country. There are many goods in production of which the American industry is in the
first place in the world - in chemicals, the production of lorries and cars etc.; it is a
leading country in machinery, production of computers, electrical and electronic
engineering etc. Food industry is also highly developed. As in other developed countries
there has been a shift in employment towards the service industries.
Industry developed mainly in the states of New York, Pennsylvania,
Illinois, Ohio, and Michigan, because of the availability of local coal deposits, as well
as iron and oil. But there are many industrial centers in the Western States and in the
Middle East, where agriculture is greatly developed.
The foreign trade is about 13.6% of the whole
world trade. The USA exports mainly machinery, cars, aeroplanes, metal-made products,
chemicals, agricultural products, raw materials, paper, textiles etc. It imports
industrial products (42% of cars), raw materials, oil (30%), consumer goods (16%), food
and tropical crops. The main trading partners are Canada and Japan.
American
scientific and technical achievements have had a strong influence on world progress. Alexander Graham Bell perfected his telephone in 1876, Thomas Alva Edison invented the electric bulb (1879), the
phonograph, the film camera and projector, the storage battery, the dictating machine, and
many other things. Henry Ford from Detroit, Michigan, built
his first motor car in 1896 and, after introducing the assembly line which revolutionized
production methods, he made the Model T Ford, in "any color you want as long as it's
black", America's most popular automobile. The Wright brothers made the first
successful flight in 1903. Albert Einstein, who was born in
Germany and became an American citizen in 1940 at the age of 61, was the creator of the
Theory of Relativity. In 1969, Apollo 11 carried the first men to the moon. Neil Armstrong
and Edwin Aldrin left a plague on the moon's surface which read: "Here men from the
Planet Earth first set foot upon the Moon, July, 1969, A.D. We came in peace for all
mankind." Between the years 1901 and 1991, 159 Americans won Nobel Prizes in science.
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Thomas Alva Edison |
Alexander Graham Bell |
