Vietnam banned its exports for several months for the same reason.

To lower domestic food prices, some countries limited or stopped their grain exports.

The trend began in 2007, when leading wheat-exporting countries such as Russia and Argentina limited or banned their exports, in hopes of increasing local food supplies and thereby bringing down domestic food prices.

Such moves may eliminate the fears of those living in the exporting countries, but they are creating panic in importing countries that must rely on what is then left for export.

However, the British don't have a history of exporting their foodstuffs, which makes it difficult for restaurants in Hong Kong to source authentic ingredients.

In addition, other factors are putting downward pressure on oil prices: change in the strategic behavior of the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries, the projected increase in Iranian exports, the scaling-down of global demand ( ' , especially from emerging markets), the long-term drop in petroleum consumption in the United States, and some displacement of oil by substitutes.

Even major fossil fuel exporting countries have great potential to develop renewable energies.

Even Africa and the Middle East, home to economies that are heavily dependent on fossil fuel exports, have enormous potential to develop renewables.

A case can be made that rich nations export environmental problems, the most graphic example being climate change.

Companies and individuals who don't have a strategy to export more, or to get more involved in foreign markets, or to play a role in global trade, are shutting themselves out of the lion's share of economic opportunity in our world.

Over the past two years, the figures on imports and exports seem not to signal a double-dip recession –?a renewed decline in the broad level of economic activity in the United States?–?but an economic expansion.

exports are rising because more foreigners have the ability to buy the things we produce and market

And while exports always seem to lag, U.S. companies are becoming more involved in the global economy with each passing month.