DYNAMICS OF STRUCTURE OF THE USA FOREIGN TRADE OF AGRICULTURAL PRODUCTS
USA foreign trade of agricultural products has been determining the functioning of the international market of agricultural products for at least 70 years. The article analyzes statistical indicators and social processes that reflect the dynamics of the structure of export-import operations of the country in the context of certain product groups. The purpose of the study was to identify and scientifically substantiate trends in structural changes in US foreign trade of agricultural products that have been formed over a long period at the international level under the influence of objective and subjective factors of foreign economic activity. The author used historical, abstract-logical, and statistical-economic research methods. The theoretical and hypothetical basis of the study is the conceptual position on export orientation and a high degree of expansionism of agricultural USA foreign trade, strongly supported by active measures of state regulation. The results of the study sufficiently confirm this hypothesis about stimulating the development of USA agriculture through the development of foreign trade operations on the international market, regardless of the prevailing factors, including the assessment of product competitiveness and trade confrontation. The author believes that considerable opportunities of overcoming the crisis phenomena, characterizing from time to time the American agribusiness. This opinion was based on identified trends of structural changes of USA foreign trade of agricultural products, most important of which is constant, although slow, export growth, favourable trade balance, expansionary trade policy and at the same time the domestic market protection, the continuous diversification of products in the export and import product groups, states assistance. This overcoming, as the analysis of concrete figures and facts shows, has always occurred and is likely to occur now through the use of active trade-market and state-lobbying (including political) mechanisms. Keywords: USA agriculture, USA foreign trade, structure of foreign trade in agricultural products, export, import, external imbalance, agricultural market, state regulation. Highlights:
♦ the structure dynamics of the USA foreign trade operations in 1946-2019 in major product groups, the results of which identified as the general direction of development (growth and decline) of export and import of basic goods and trade balance, and specific trends that reflect the structural changes in the nomenclature and nature (degree of processing) of exported and imported consumer goods;
♦ the cause-and-effect relationships are revealed, the main causes and the decisive factors are formulated. Under the influence of these factors the spatial-temporal structure of USA foreign trade of agricultural products was formulated. This structure for a long time differs in national export-oriented agricultural production, the strong expansionist orientation of foreign policy, a significant degree of state regulation (in expanding exports and protecting the domestic market);
♦ the nature and consequences of the current foreign trade dynamics of products structure of the agricultural sector of the USA, expressed in steady trends of slower growth of exports of American agricultural products, weakening the competitiveness of national producers on the world market, another threat of permanent chronic overproduction of agricultural products.
Valery N. Minat, Candidate of Geography, Associate Professor, Associate Professor of the Economics and Management Department of the Ryazan State Agrotechnological University named after P. A. Kostychev