Almost any American supermarket doubles as an international food bazaar.

      Alongside potatoes from Idaho and beef from Texas , stores display melons from Mexico , olive oil from Italy , coffee from Colombia , cinnamon from Sri Lanka , wine and cheese from France , and bananas from Costa Rica . The grocery store isn’t the only place Americans indulge their taste for foreign made products. Americans buy cameras and cars from Japan , shirts from Bangladesh , videocassette recorders from South Korea , paper products from Canada and fresh flowers from Ecuador . In 2001, U.S. imports of goods and services totaled $1.6 trillion.

      Most Americans are aware of our penchant for importing, but they may not realize the United States ranks as the world’s greatest exporter, selling $1.3 trillion a year to the rest of the world. U.S. companies sell personal computers, bulldozers, financial services, movies and thousands of other products to almost all parts of the globe.

      International trade and investment are facts of everyday life. Over the past three decades, the sum of U.S. imports and exports increased from 11 percent of GDP to about 30 percent. International financial transactions have grown rapidly, too. Incoming and outgoing investments rose from less than 1 percent of total output to more than 3 percent.

            The United States isn’t alone. The rest of the world has seen a similar surge in cross-border business. One of the great debates of the early 21st century centers on globalization, a shorthand term for the intermingling of the world’s economies in an era of jet travel...

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