The economic importance of Syria’s foreign trade and the classification of factors affecting it

Foreign trade remains one of the most important economic activities in the Syrian national economy due to the acute need of this economy for foreign markets to sell manufactured products, provide foreign currency receipts necessary to support economic development plans, and meet the country’s need for foreign goods necessary for populations and to maintain production in various industries. The foreign trade of the Syrian Arab Republic (SAR), as shown in the article, is influenced by a number of factors – objective (geographical, climatic, resource), economic (internal, including production, transport and logistics, etc. and external, including sanctions against the Syrian Arab Republic, regional economic cooperation, etc.) and political (internal and external, including regional and global), which contribute to or limit its development. The author also highlights the commercial (foreign trade) policy pursued by the government to support foreign trade. The article presents a classification of these factors, as well as an analysis of quantitative indicators of foreign trade – exports, imports, trade turnover, export and import quotas, which allows to determine the degree of involvement of the national economy of the Syrian Arab Republic in world processes. The analysis of factors affecting Syrian foreign trade provides the author with the opportunity to interpret quantitative indicators of foreign trade, and the analysis of these indicators helps to interpret the current situation of Syrian foreign trade, which allowed the author to identify obstacles limiting the development of foreign trade of the Syrian Arab Republic, especially in the field of exports, and then propose some measures that could eliminate these obstacles