International Trade Country Project

Use this three weeks project to teach international trade through one concrete decision. Students connect a country's trade pattern to opportunity cost, exchange rates, capital flows, and one evaluated policy. Grade the decisions and the economic reasoning, not decoration or a lucky final number. The checkpoints make the process visible and keep the project from becoming a last-night slideshow.

The classroom prompt

Teams act as analysts for one country. They identify major exports and imports, propose evidence for comparative advantage, interpret the current account, and evaluate one tariff, quota, or exchange-rate scenario.

Put the question where every student can see it and do not supply vocabulary before students commit to an answer. Their first explanation becomes the evidence you use during the debrief.

Materials and setup

Use official public data from a national statistical agency, World Bank, IMF, WTO, or UN trade database plus a source log and graph template.

Open the international trade sandbox if you want students to test the same idea on an interactive model after the paper task. A projected version is enough; students do not need accounts for this lesson.

Run the lesson

Answer key and teacher moves

• Export concentration can suggest comparative advantage but does not prove the underlying opportunity costs by itself.
• A current-account deficit is matched by a financial-account surplus, ignoring statistical discrepancy.
• Currency appreciation tends to reduce net exports by making exports dearer and imports cheaper.
• Tariffs create producer gains and government revenue but also consumer losses and deadweight loss; net national effects need evidence.

Do not give credit for the correct direction alone. Ask students to name the changed determinant, identify the curve or quantity that changes, and connect the change to the final outcome. A complete explanation contains a cause, a model move, and a result.

What to collect

Use 25 points each for official evidence, correct model use, policy evaluation, and clear sourcing and communication.

Most likely misconception: Students treat a trade deficit as money disappearing or as proof that every domestic industry is losing.

Support and extension: Offer a preselected country and dataset. Extend by comparing nominal and real effective exchange-rate evidence.

A clean closing question

End with: What changed, what stayed fixed, and what evidence proves your conclusion? That sentence works as the final written check because it forces students to separate a cause from the movement it produces. Collect it, scan for the misconception above, and use the first three minutes of the next class to repair the pattern if needed.

This resource is ready to copy into a slide, handout, or LMS assignment. If you assign it for points, publish the success criteria before students begin: correct model, correct direction, and an explanation that links the two.