Trade happens when countries buy from and sell to other countries. Imports are goods brought into a country. Exports are goods sent out of a country.

An alliance is when a group of countries work together in some way.

In a trade alliance countries co-operate by

• Making it easy to buy and sell goods between the members of the alliance
• Making it harder for other countries to sell into the alliance

An trade alliance, such as the E.U. (European Union), makes trading harder for outside (non-member countries) by

• By having quotas - these are a limit on the amount of a good that can be sold by one country
• By having tariffs - these are taxes which are put on imports to make them more expensive, and so lees likely to be bought