The United States and Italy are interdependent on each other for various products. For example, we often see Americans wearing Italian designer clothes, while on the other hand; Italians covet the American brand clothes. As a nation, Italy has been on a steady decline with their exports to the United States. Italy has exported 238.2 billion dollars of total in 1997; 242.3 billion dollars of total exports in 1998; and 148.6 billion dollars of total exports in 1999. On the reverse side, Italy has always imported less United States products in each respective year, giving them a positive U.S. trade balance for the past three consecutive years.
             As a member of many of the major economic organizations, Italy has grown to establish itself as the world's sixth largest economy. Italy's economy has branched out into many sectors of today's aggressive market and has established different sizes of firms and companies worldwide. However, due to economic dynamism, there is an income divergence between northern and southern Italy. This remains as one of the nation's most prominent economic problems. The government of Italy has taken measures to regulate the various "monopoly" type firms and large conglomerations.
             These firms deal largely with the importation licensing of foreign goods, with the exception of certain agricultural items. Practically all goods coming from the United States are permitted to be brought into Italy without import licenses. The Italian government broke up the telephone monopoly in Italy in three ways. Privatizing Telecom Italia, establishing a new communications authority, and allowing the original monopoly to be challenged by smaller based companies, achieved this. The end of this monopoly led to more service exports, which constitutes more firms providing more services to countries worldwide.
             Importation laws in Italy have recently become stricter, therefore lessening th
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