In Chapter 11 we learned how a change in U.S. income could affect other countries through U.S. imports. This occurs through a change in U.S. imports causing net exports to change in other countries. However, this effect should differ considerably depending upon the magnitude of trade between the United States and different countries and how big this trade is relative to the countries' incomes. One approach to predicting which countries would be more sensitive to changes in U.S. income would be to examine the size of countries' exports to the United States as a fraction of GDP. To do so, examine The CIA Factbook, which has data on many different countries.

Find the ratio of (exports to the U.S.)/GDP for Germany, Japan, and Mexico. Do this by looking at the "Economy" section of each countries' data. Find the GDP of the nation near the top of the section and then move down to the "Exports" section and find total exports and the percentage of exports going to the United States. For each country:

Questions

1. First, calculate the dollar value of exports to the United States by multiplying the (percentage of exports to U.S.)x(total exports).
2. Then, divide this amount by GDP to find exports to the United States as a fraction of GDP.
3. List the values found in question 2 and then rank the countries in order from most sensitive to changes in U.S. income to least sensitive.