Лекция: National Production

The United States is the world’s greatest economic power in term of both Gross National Product and per capita GNP, with its export accounting for more than 10% of all world trade.

Although the importance of industrial production is falling and that of services growing (as in most of Western Europe), the US remains the world’s greatest maker of industrial goods and around 20 million Americans are still employed in manufacturing. The industrial heart of the nation is the Midwest around the Great Lakes, especially in the region stretching from southern Michigan through northern Ohio and into the Pittsburgh area of Pennsylvania. Another important industrial region is the Northeast, which is the home of the major computer manufacturers. Service industries are also very important in this region and New York is the country’s banking and insurance capital. The nation’s fastest growing region, however, is the Southeast, where the chemical industry and high-technology industries are now catching up with the traditional textile industry as many firms exploit the warm climate and low labour costs.

47% of the land area of the US is farmland, of which 152 million hectares are harvested cropland and 560 million hectares are permanent pasture land, yet only 6.2 million people live on the nation’s 2,300,000 farms. The Midwest is the most important agricultural region in the United States (though California is the number one state in terms of the value of its agricultural products ) and alone produces almost twice as much as the American people can consume; corn and wheat are the main crops, and livestock and dairy farming are also carried out on a large scale. Although the South is still important for traditional crops, such as tobacco, corn and cotton, there is now far greater variety, while Texas is the nation’s leading producer of cattle, sheep, cotton and rice. The West is important for cattle and wheat farming in the Great Plains area, and for fruit in the fertile valleys of the states that border the Pacific. Yet agriculture (together with fishing) accounts for less than 3% of GNP.