Grade Level/unit

Grade 12 economics - International Trade Unit 6

Purpose

This lesson will help students understand the concepts of marketing, comparative advantage and the uses of monetary policy to affect markets.

Length

About five class periods are needed to complete the lesson as written. However, this lesson can be expanded or shortened depending on the time available by making more or less of the work done outside of class.

H/SS Content Standard

12.6 Students analyze issues of international trade, and explain how the U.S. economy affects, and is affected by, economic forces beyond its borders, in terms of:


1.the gains in consumption and production efficiency from trade with emphasis on the main products and changing geographic patterns of twentieth century trade among countries in the Western hemisphere


4.explain foreign exchange, how exchange rates are determined, and the effects of the dollar gaining (or losing) value relative to other currencies a strong or weak dollar

H/SS Analysis Skills

Historical Interpretation
6. students conduct cost/benefit analyses and apply basic economic indicators to analyze the aggregate economic behavior of the U.S. economy

Possible Interdisciplinary Connections

This lesson is not highly interdisciplinary since most high school economics classes are taught as single discipline classes rather than as part of an interdisciplinary course of study. However, if student develop ads for their products or write copy, art and language arts might be addressed. If students analyze graphs and charts with supply curves as part of their research or if they consult trade statistics, mathematics might also be addressed.

Adaptations for Special Needs

Students of languages other than English might pursue this project by consulting catalogs or newspapers and doing interviews of recent immigrants from targeted trading partners instead of doing the more traditional research of markets.Advanced students might compare the products advocated by their classmates against real trade statistics to determine the viability of their classroom trade decisions. They might also come up with other methods to stimulate the sale of U.S. products overseas.

Background information

It will be helpful if the teacher has researched the manner in which trade statistics are gathered and recorded. It is important to realize that services are not counted as part of the trade statistics. Since a great many American exports are derived from services such as programming software, making films, etc. this can have a tremendous influence on balance of trade statistics so that the U.S. appears to be in more of a trade deficit than it really is.