"Europe, Canada, Mexico, South Korea -- those are all big markets for U.S. products. They are actually expected to grow faster in 2006 than in 2005," says Walden, a specialist with the North Carolina Cooperative Extension Service and professor with the Department of Agricultural and Resource Economics.

"China and Japan are expected to grow but perhaps slightly slower than in the past," he adds. "But I think overall this is a favorable picture.

"It’s important because the U.S. export market is an important market. It accounts for about 15 percent of the economy. And so if foreign countries are growing this should mean more exports and more U.S. jobs.

"So I think the lesson here is when we are looking ahead to the economy, we certainly want to think about what’s happening internally but we also want to think about what’s happening in other countries."