What is import?

It is known as importing the transaction to purchase goods from other countries, while that is registered and is liable to taxation under applicable legislation in the country of the buyer. Therefore, international traffic of prohibited products, or those that secretly enter evading the treasury, are left out of this

definition.

For the selling country, these items are called exports. The imports can incorporate a market for products that can not be produced in this place or when this is very expensive. Imports often represent the inputs for the manufacture of other manufactures.

The concept of imports is more important when speaking in macroeconomic terms, that is, the economy of the great aggregates of nations, and not that of the company or the consumer.

The difference between exports and imports is called a country’s trade balance, and it is what supplies it with the much-needed currencies: operations between countries are not carried out in each other’s local currency but in an international standard currency. , which is currently the US dollar.

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The trade balance

Thus, if a country’s imports are lower than exports, there will be no drawbacks and in fact, it will accumulate reserves, while if the opposite occurs (more imports than exports), a deficit in the trade balance will be produced, only remediable from of the previous accumulation of reserves or, eventually, of the taking of debt.

It could be assumed that the development of a new industry for a country that is typically a producer of raw materials would be beneficial since this would allow it to be self-sufficient with respect to that input, but there are certain inputs that will be impossible to produce locally and will have to be imported anyway. that in the short term, you should be able to face negative balances in the trade balance. The second half of the 20th century in Argentina was characterized by these dilemmas, under the so-called ‘ stop and go ‘ cycles.

Imports are essential when designing a country’s economic policy. All, to a greater or lesser extent, have customs barriers that pursue the objective of protecting the local industry: the reduction of these taxes will force the productivity of that country (since it must now compete with products from around the world), which It can be seen as a benefit for the consumer due to the greater competition and its impact on prices, but also as a detriment to the local labor market.

Import integration

Countries usually establish import integration mechanisms, so that these are done with greater agility and fewer controls. It may be complete or only in specific industries, strategically designed for a particular purpose. The European Union is one of the most advanced examples of integration, since the market, the currency (the euro) and a certain uniformity in economic policy are shared.

In these countries, the measurement of imports is only identifiable through surveys, since the unification of the markets ends with the statistics among the member states. Another case where measurement becomes complicated is in services imports, in the era of globalization in which a large part of these transactions is carried out entirely in virtual form.