Quotes & Sayings About Imports

Russian cars are silly. They look like imports drawn by a cartoonist for a UAW newsletter. — P. J. O'Rourke

Most of our imports come from other countries — George W. Bush

The nobler the truth or sentiment, the less imports the question of authorship. — Ralph Waldo Emerson

If a trade deficit is determined solely by rates of savings and investment, then the U.S. trade deficit will be impervious to a get-tough trade policy. Slapping higher tariffs on imports will only deprive foreigners of the dollars they would have earned by selling in the U.S. market. — Daniel T. Griswold

French rhetorical models are too narrow for the English tradition. Most pernicious of French imports is the notion that there is no person behind a text. Is there anything more affected, aggressive, and relentlessly concrete than a Parisan intellectual behind his/her turgid text? The Parisian is a provincial when he pretends to speak for the universe. — Camille Paglia

We forget today that Britain still depends for its livelihood and, indeed, its day-to-day survival, on the sea. But the Royal Navy is now pitifully small and has been reduced in size by the current Government, seeking economies to finance its social programmes. Fine while there is no threat to our security. But what use would schools and hospitals be if we could not protect our imports? — John Keegan

For the rest, all that rises out of the sea of arithmetic is a jungle of dates, battles, exports, imports and the like, forgotten as soon as learned and perfectly useless had they been remembered. — C.S. Lewis

Our proper mode in situations where demand was high and supply low was to elbow, jostle, crowd, and hustle, and, if all that failed, to bribe, flatter, exaggerate, and lie. I was uncertain whether these traits were genetic, deeply cultural, or simply a rapid evolutionary development. We had been forced to adapt to ten years of living in a bubble economy pumped up purely by American imports; three decades of on-again, off-again war, including the sawing in half of the country in '54 by foreign magicians and the brief Japanese interregnum of World War II; and the previous century of avuncular French molestation. — Viet Thanh Nguyen

Why would prophetic diatribes against the wealthy coincide with prophetic diatribes against the worship of gods other than Yahweh? Maybe because of the natural connection between resentment of Israel's upper class and opposition to the internationalism that, as we've seen, was linked to alien gods. Archaeological excavations show Hosea's era to be a time of great economic inequality among Israelites. It was also a time of expanding international trade, 35 and it could not have escaped the attention of the poor that the rich were closely tied to that trade - not just because they controlled it and profited from it, but because so many pricey imports wound up in their homes. 36 — Robert Wright

There were stories coming out of Thailand that slave labor was being used to catch and process the seafood we eat. They were nearly all from Miramar. Because of reports of widespread labor abuses, several countries are now considering a ban on imports of Thai seafood. — Lourdes Garcia-Navarro

If any vestige of the American automobile industry is to survive, it must involve state-of-the-art vehicles that are not equal to but surpass the best imports in every way. — Brock Yates

There is perhaps no single factor contributing so much to people's frequent reluctance to let the market work as their inability to conceive how some necessary balance, between demand and supply, between exports and imports, or the like, will be brought about without deliberate control. The conservative feels safe and content only if he is assured that some higher wisdom watches and supervises change, only if he knows that some authority is charged with keeping the change orderly. — Friedrich August Von Hayek

All those who perish in the wrath of God
Here meet together out of every land;
And ready are they to pass o'er the river,
Because celestial Justice spurs them on,
So that their fear is turned into desire.
This way there never passes a good soul;
And hence if Charon doth complain of thee,
Well mayst thou know now what his speech imports. — Dante Alighieri

Import and substituting imports with domestic production are a big opportunity. With a devaluation of the rupee, imports get expensive, and for Indian manufacturers, this creates a huge opportunity. — Baba Kalyani

I think all countries need to aim to cut the CO2 emissions per person, taking account of externalities like imports and exports. — Martin Rees

I thrive with fashion and shopping and imports and things like that. It gives me a rush. I love Barneys New York and Neiman Marcus and all the top-of-the-line houses. — Lark Voorhies

India must achieve the real goal?that is energy independence or an economy which will function well within total freedom from oil, gas or coal imports. — Abdul Kalam

Democracy is not a commodity for import and export. — Prince Hassan Bin Talal

Trade allegedly does not foster growth because when it begins, a flood of imports of factory origin destroys the handicraft manufacturing of the less developed country: the models for this are the effects of British exports of textiles and of iron in India and Chile in the first half of the nineteenth century. — Arthur Lewis

Our course, then, is clear; if we desire to put an end to pauperism, or to lessen it, we should import everything we can use or sell, in order that we may employ our unemployed hands, in making the goods by which we pay for these imports. — Joseph Hume

In this 21st century world, some of our country's most significant exports and imports extend beyond goods and services: They also include innovation, knowledge, discovery, and healing. — Kathleen Sebelius

The upward revision of import duty, from 1 per cent to over 4 per cent on steam coal imports, will adversely impact the industry, as it will lead to increase in cost of power generation. — Gautam Adani

In Spain, hilly terrain and antiquated planting and harvest practices keep farmers from retrieving more than about 100 pounds [of almonds] per acre. Growers in the Central Valley, by contrast can expect up to 3000 pounds an acre. But for all their sophisticated strategies to increase yield and profitability, almond growers still have one major problem - pollination. Unless a bird or insect brings the pollen from flower to flower, even the most state-of-the-art orchard won't grow enough nuts. An almond grower who depends on wind and a few volunteer pollinators in this desert of cultivation can expect only 40 pounds of almonds per acre. If he imports honey bees, the average yield is 2,400 pounds per acre, as much as 3,000 in more densely planted orchards. To build an almond, it takes a bee. — Hannah Nordhaus

The prices of all imports would rise if the dollar depreciates. — Robert C. Solomon

Ten years after the Boston Tea Party, tea was still far more popular than coffee, which only became the more popular drink in the mid-nineteenth century. Coffee's popularity grew after the duty on imports was abolished in 1832, making it more affordable. The duty was briefly reintroduced during the Civil War but was abolished again in 1872. — Tom Standage

More and more of our imports are coming from overseas — George W. Bush

It is a remarkable irony that many of the best shows in London - Chicago, Oklahoma! - and even such harmless diversions as The Lion King and Beauty and the Beast - are imports from the colonies, while the homegrown productions include such luxurious twaddle as Mamma Mia!, Bombay Dreams, and Starlight Express. Brits who view' American culture with disdain are the ones who must pay the freight here, being careful not to throw stones from inside their glass houses. Though it is doubtless a bitter pill to swallow, not everything that is idiotic, pandering, or unsophisticated originated in the land of the free and the home of Kenny G. Americans did not invent Cats. — Joe Queenan

Without a sharp turnaround toward democracy and equality in the United States, Europe will be virtually alone in its commitment to social democracy. The pressures of low-wage immigrant labor, cheap imports from Eastern Europe and Asia, and free-market practices of governments are already threatening once secure areas of employment and causing right-wing populism to pop up in various Western European countries. Surprising numbers of middle-class and working-class voters have supported ultranationalist, neofascist parties throughout Europe because, like white male workers in the United States, they see their status slipping. — Steve Brouwer

If you get made fun of working at Pier One Imports, you can't pelt them with poop. — Doug Stanhope

The working out of a balanced economy throughout Germany to provide the necessary means to pay for approved imports has not been accomplished, although that too is expressly required by the Potsdam Agreement. — James F. Byrnes

They import and they consume reality. — Robinson Jeffers

It is the quality of the moment, not the number of days, or events, or of actors, that imports. — Ralph Waldo Emerson

They did not understand that by liberalizing imports, the government was also promoting exports. — Jeffrey D. Sachs

Protectionist measures may permit domestic industries to thrive, which under free trade would wither in the face of cheap imports. Imports may be opposed by the government in the public interest--for example because it thinks it imprudent to rely upon foreign suppliers of certain strategic goods such as staple foods, energy, or military equipment, or because it wishes to nurture an infant industry as yet too weak to compete internationally, or because it wishes to preserve traditional industries such as fishing in order to preserve employment and local communities. — Vaughan Lowe

The vast majority of our imports come from outside the country. — George W. Bush

Robots can now milk cows. Oil prices have fallen globally, meaning both the petro-states and those indirectly propped up by them are weakened. At the same time, slower growth in China has lately shrunk its voracious appetite for African, Australian, and Latin American commodities. China accounted for more than a third of global growth in recent years, and its growth engine multiplied the growth of many of the countries that exported raw materials to Beijing. That has slowed. China's total debt has grown from roughly 150 percent of its GDP in 2007 to around 240 percent today - a massive increase in one decade that is dampening its growth and its imports and shrinking China's wallet for foreign aid and investment in African and Latin American commodity-exporting countries. In — Thomas L. Friedman

To speak only of food inspections: the United States currently imports 80% of its seafood, 32% of its fruits and nuts, 13% of its vegetables, and 10% of its meats. In 2007, these foods arrived in 25,000 shipments a day from about 100 countries. The FDA was able to inspect about 1% of these shipments, down from 8% in 1992. In contrast, the USDA is able to inspect 16% of the foods under its purview. By one assessment, the FDA has become so short-staffed that it would take the agency 1,900 years to inspect every foreign plant that exports food to the United States. — Marion Nestle

Even if the dollar does decline during the coming months, the delays in the response of exports and imports to the more competitive dollar will mean that the increase in aggregate demand from this source may not happen for a year or more. — Martin Feldstein

Why, I say, that to tax the community for the advantage of a class is not protection; it is plunder, and I entirely disclaim it; but I ask you to protect the rights and interests of labour generally in the first place, by allowing no free imports from countries which meet you with countervailing duties; and, in the second place, with respect to agricultural produce, to compensate the soil for the burdens from which other classes are free by an equivalent duty. This is my view of what is called protection. — Benjamin Disraeli

America is becoming more and more dependent upon imports from foreign manufacturers than we are exports from our country in all fields: in appliances, in clothing, even food. This year America may become for the first time in its history a net food importer. — Marcy Kaptur

Growth in U.S. real imports slowed to about 3 percent in 2006, in part reflecting a drop in real terms in imports of crude oil and petroleum products. — Ben Bernanke

Film is the packaging of information in cans. Videotape is involved with the feeding back of process. Film rips information away from the situation for use elsewhere. Videotape can be fed back into a given situation and enrich experience. Film extends man as a spectator. Videotape extends man as a cybernator. Film imports information. Videotape implodes indigenous data. — Paul Ryan

The things of God are of deep import; and time, and experience, and careful and ponderous and solemn thoughts can only find them out. — Joseph Smith Jr.

In society, in the best institutions of men, it is easy to detect a certain precocity. When we should still be growing children, we are already little men. Give me a culture which imports much muck from the meadows, and deepens the soil,
not that which trusts to heating manures, and improved implements, and modes of culture only! — Henry David Thoreau

There are people with vested interest who do not want us to reform our energy sector so that we remain dependent on imports. All reform moves are resisted. Bureaucrats are hesitant to take bold decisions. — Veerappa Moily

Simply raising fuel economy standards for passenger cars and light trucks to 33 miles per gallon would eliminate our oil imports from the Persian Gulf. — Jan Schakowsky

In 1961, before the container was in international use, ocean freight costs alone accounted for 12 percent of the value of U.S. exports and 10 percent of the value of U.S. imports. — Marc Levinson

TARIFF, n. A scale of taxes on imports, designed to protect the domestic producer against the greed of his consumer. — Ambrose Bierce

The notion dies hard that in some sort of way exports are patriotic but imports are immoral. — David Ormsby-Gore, 5th Baron Harlech

I've always considered making it legal for Americans to import their prescription drugs a free-trade issue. Imports create competition and keep domestic industry more responsive to consumers. — Chuck Grassley

A nation's exchange rate is the single most important price in its economy; it will influence the entire range of individual prices, imports and exports, and even the level of economic activity. So it is hard for any government to ignore large swings in its exchange rate ... — Paul Volcker

In our Revolution we believe that we have broken the chain of a consumer economy based on imports, and we are free to decide our destiny . And in order to realize the interests of the Somali people, their achievement of a better life, the full development of their potentialities and the fulfilment of their aspirations, we solemnly declare Somalia to be a Socialist State. — Siad Barre

Imports remain a concern with the currency holding at $US0.75 cents and cost pressures persist, in particular for power and transport. — Christofer Drew

The CAFTA region currently imports $15 billion annually of U.S. agriculture and manufactured goods. — Ron Lewis

U.S. exports to China have more than quintupled since China entered the WTO and have grown more quickly than imports. In fact, China is America's fastest-growing export market. — Henry Paulson

Underlying all this activity - in the customhouses, on the wharves, in every place of business - were numbers. Merchants measured out their wares and negotiated prices; customs officers calculated taxes to be levied on imports; scribes and stewards prepared ships' manifests, recording the values in long columns using Roman numerals. They would have put their writing implements to one side and used either their fingers or a physical abacus to perform the additions, then picked up pen and parchment once again to enter the subtotals from each page on a final page at the end. With no record of the computation itself, if anyone questioned the answer, the entire process would have to be repeated. — Keith J. Devlin

What is doing the damage is the fact that the U.K. is pulling in more imports, which shows the continued strength of the economy and the strength of sterling. — Adam Cole

We all have to draw some lines. To preserve my sanity, I steer clear of cooking, professional sports and most imports, unless imported to us via PBS, Sundance, etc. — Hank Stuever

There won't be some overnight miracle cure. But the measures I take will be sustainable. Our goal is to cease food imports within four years. This will create a minimum of 2 million jobs in agriculture. — Ashraf Ghani

The foreign accent was a promise, and indeed, all over the country, European imports added spice to the sciences, the arts, and other areas. What one had to give was not considered inferior to what one received. — Rudolf Arnheim

America stopped making vinyl and phased out the single but Germany held out and refused. Warner's never phased out vinyl in Germany. Now America imports it! — Peter Hook

I thought serious writers smoked like French imports or something. — Jake Irons

It is clear our nation is reliant upon big foreign oil. More and more of our imports come from overseas. — George W. Bush

The E.U. imports more agricultural goods from developing countries around the world than does the U.S., Canada and Japan, combined. — John Bruton

To assert, as some have, that illegal immigrants do not depress wages because they do the jobs Americans refuse is the kind of nonsense economists speak when they strain to be counterintuitive. It is similar to saying that cheap imports do not hold down prices. — Mark Helprin

If in the after life there is not music, we will have to import it. — Domenico Cieri

Fortunately for England, all her imports are raw materials. — Joseph Hume

America today has insufficient savings to finance both crucial investment and its consumption of imports. — James Dale Davidson

As the global expansion of Indian and Chinese restaurants suggests, xenophobia is directed against foreign people, not foreign cultural imports. — Eric Hobsbawm

Our strategy should be based on indigenisation and import substitution. The government must provide opportunities for domestic companies to participate in sectors in which the country continues to depend on imports. — Baba Kalyani

Most of us know what we should expect to find in a dragon's lair, but, as I said before, Eustace had read only the wrong books. They had a lot to say about exports and imports and governments and drains, but they were weak on dragons. — C.S. Lewis

You do not need to import greatness from another; you just need to act on your own. — Alan Cohen

We've had a long wrangle with the pharmaceutical industry about parallel imports, and what we were saying is we want to make medicines and drugs as affordable as a possible to what is largely a poor population. — Thabo Mbeki

I know that there is a great diversity of opinion as to who, in fact, pays the duties on imports. I do not intend to discuss that point. We of the staple and exporting States have long settled the question for ourselves, almost unanimously, from sad experience. — John C. Calhoun

Imports create competition and keep domestic industry more responsive to consumers. In the United States, we import everything consumers want. So why not pharmaceuticals? — Chuck Grassley

Since Europe is dependent on imports of energy and most of its raw materials, it can be subdued, if not quite conquered, without all those nuclear weapons the Soviets have aimed at it simply through the shipping routes and raw materials they control. — Barbara Amiel

If we had continued making progress at the rate we were during the Carter administration, we would be free of oil imports from Saudi Arabia today. — Jay Inslee

Britain has a lot of wind. It's our wind. We don't have to import it. — Edward Davey

By 2020, 50 percent of imports should be reduced, which should become 75 percent by 2025. By 2030, India should be energy independent. — Veerappa Moily

Often motivated by a desire to maintain the existing status quo, sloth almost cost the U.S. its auto industry, as it refused for decades to build fuel-efficient cars to compete with Japanese, Korean and European imports. — Simon Mainwaring

We are getting more and more imports from abroad. — George W. Bush

gave rise to a selection process in which the survivors were predominantly those with greater capacity to retain sodium in their system, while those with lower capacity perished. The selection mechanism was dehydration. Wilson and Grim hold that the black populations that grew out of the slave imports came to be dominated, through genetic inheritance, by people with extra capacity to retain salt in their system. And this, they conclude, is the main factor that explains the phenomenon in question. This explanation is disputed by other medical scientists. The conflicting views of the contending scientists were summarized recently by Daniel Goleman (1990). According to Goleman, Elijah Saunders, a cardiologist at the University of Maryland Medical School and coauthor of a leading textbook on the subject, Hypertension in Blacks, holds that anger against racism is the principal cause of hypertension among blacks in the United States. Shirley Brown of the University — Joseph E. Inikori

Diplomacy in a sense is the opposite of writing. You have to disperse yourself so much: the lady who comes in crying because she's had a fight with the secretary; exports and imports; students in trouble; thumbtacks for the embassy. — Carlos Fuentes

Our foreign-exchange reserves when I took over were no more than a billion dollars; that is, roughly equal to two weeks' imports. — Manmohan Singh

Thereafter the red edges of war spread over another half of the world. Turkey's neighbors, Bulgaria, Rumania, Italy, and Greece, were eventually drawn in. Thereafter, with her exit to the Mediterranean closed, Russia was left dependent on Archangel, icebound half the year, and on Vladivostok, 8,000 miles from the battlefront. With the Black Sea closed, her exports dropped by 98 per cent and her imports by 95 per cent. The cutting off of Russia with all its consequences, the vain and sanguinary tragedy of Gallipoli, the diversion of Allied strength in the campaigns of Mesopotamia, Suez, and Palestine, the ultimate breakup of the Ottoman Empire, the subsequent history of the Middle East, followed from the voyage of the Goeben. — Barbara W. Tuchman

The U.S. now imports over half of its oil supply from the Middle East. This dangerous dependence on foreign energy sources is an issue of national security. — Kenny Marchant

We entered the global market only in the end-'80s, and that was because imports became more liberal. — Azim Premji

For the Second Amendment to do its job, the other side must become much better informed. I watched an action-adventure program last night that asserted that the famous AK-47 the original peoples' rifle (and Authority's greatest mistake) is rare in this country, and that the only ones here were originally smuggled in from the Middle East, or possibly from South America. The idiots who wrote this mess seemed unaware that after legal imports mostly from China were illegally cut off by executive order, they began to be manufactured here. — L. Neil Smith

The direct investment of Japanese businesses to East Asian economies accelerates the reallocation of their production bases. Consequently, between Japan and the other East Asian countries, both exports and imports are growing substantially. — Toshihiko Fukui

Here at home, ... while the most likely scenario remains solid growth and low inflation
subject to the usual ups and downs
certain sectors have been impacted by the crisis, some because of increased imports and others because of decreased exports. Moreover, problems in the global economy do constitute a risk to all our overall economic well-being. — Robert Rubin

Canada is a country whose main exports are hockey players and cold fronts. Our main imports are baseball players and acid rain. — Pierre Trudeau

You could walk from North Tai Ping Zhuang over to the North Entrance of He Ping Street, and you may as well have smoked your way through two packs of Camels. You smoked the taxi driver's smoke as he spun sharply around a corner, you smoked the local party leader's smoke as he tried to establish order at a meeting, you smoked your boyfriend's smoke whether he loved you or not. Chinese-made cigarettes, foreign imports, dodgy rip-offs. The city was in a permanent fog. — Xiaolu Guo

The United States has means to wound Latin American countries deeply, chiefly by altering trade policies to cut imports in ways that would throw thousands out of work. — Stephen Kinzer

If we can't export the scenery, we'll import the tourists. — William Cornelius Van Horne

I supported the Korean Trade Agreement in 2011. They promised - when it was signed, President [Barak] Obama said it would increase our exports to Korea by $10 billion a year.That creates jobs in America.Since - last year, 2015, there was no increase, like instead of billions of dollars there was like a $100 million increase in our exports to Korea, whereas as their imports to us went up $12 billion, and our trade deficit increased 240 percent. — Jeff Sessions

Turkey's energy bill due to imports will fall with the increase in use of renewable energy sources. We have no control over the prices of petroleum and natural gas. — Ali Babacan

France has not only built a bureaucratic barrier against American culture, it has constructed a notorious intellectual case against it as well. The French spend hundreds of millions of dollars subsidizing film production, extend interest-free loans to designated filmmakers, and have placed quotas not only on imports but on television time. — Tyler Cowen