The US imports over $1.2 trillion in value of goods and services every year. These goods and services range from high tech tools to luxury items to more mundane household products and originate in more than a hundred and fifty countries. The import market is huge, so you should easily be able to find a spot in it for your goods!

Why Such a large Business?

The imports market is staggeringly large for a country with a population of only around 310 million people. There're several reasons for this that may be helpful to businesses considering joining the market. First, some imported products aren't locally available, like bananas. Second, some kinds of goods, specifically luxurious things like French perfume, caviar, champagne, or German luxury cars, have a cachet that the locally-produced equivalent may have. Finally, many imported products, like electronic devices or clothing, are cheaper when made somewhere else.

Major Import Partners

While US imports originate from numerous places, the market is taken over by several countries. Slightly more than 18% of all US imports come from China. The next highest amount of imports comes from Canada, with 14.8%, then Japan, Mexico and Germany. Actually, the top 15 US imports partners handle almost 75% of the imports market. Including countries such as South Korea, the united kingdom, Nigeria, Taiwan,Venezuela, Saudi Arabia, India, and others that make a number of items.

Top Import Items

The US imports a number of products, such as everything from food items to clothes and vehicles PCs. The largest import is crude oil, which makes up an impressive 16.3% of all US imports and is the key contribution of Saudi Arabia, Venezuela, and Nigeria. Some other important items include passenger cars, materials to make medicines, computer systems and computer components, cotton clothing, mobile phones and some other telecoms equipment, and Televisions and DVD players.

Import Businesses

While the US imports marketplace does large business each year, the businesses involved with it aren't huge. Actually, just 4% of US import market is consisting of large national or multinational corporations. The other 96% are small businesses. What this means is that there're lots and lots of available trading partners in the US searching for many different types of goods to import, and they are searching for both finished products like clothing and electronics and raw materials for producing their own goods.

Trade Limitations and Rules

While in some ways importing goods into the US has a simpler procedure than exporting goods from the United States, there're several important issues to think about when getting involved with the US imports market. The United States does charge import tariffs or duty on a number of products when they enter the US. The tax differs on the item and the country of origin, thus it is important to research this subject. The United States also limits imports of particular sorts of raw materials to set per country quotas, so it might be difficult to break into these markets.

The US imports market is huge and is continuing to grow significantly. While it is dominated by imports from a relatively small number of countries, the market expansion implies that there's plenty of room for new businesses to get involved.