United States of America

Geographical location: North America; borders Canada in the north and Mexico in the south.

Its territory equals 9,363,300 sq km.

Its capital city is Washington D.C.

The administrative divisions consist of 50 states and the federal district of Columbia. Territories: Puerto Rico (formally a freely associated state) and the Virgin Islands in the West Indies, as well as Guam, Eastern Samoa and a number of small islands in the Pacific. The Caroline, Mariana and Marshall islands, which are UN trusteeships, are administered by the United States. According to the US Census Bureau, the US population exceeds 295 million.

The state language is English.

The currency is the dollar.

The political system is a federal republic. The US Constitution was adopted on September 17, 1787 and came into force on March 4, 1789. Later it was amended several times.

The head of state is the president. The president and the vice-president are elected in two-stage elections for a term of four years. Presidential elections are held in parallel with Congress elections in leap years. The president’s term of office is limited to eight years. Should the president die, resign or be impeached, the vice-president succeeds him as president and is entitled to nominate a new vice-president who should be approved by both houses of Congress.
The current US president is George W. Bush, Jr. (reelected on November 2, 2004 and inaugurated on January 20, 2005). The current vice-president is Richard Bruce Cheney (re-elected on November 2, 2004).

Legislative power is vested in Congress consisting of two houses – the Senate (upper house) and the House of Representatives (lower house). The 100-person Senate comprises two senators from each state irrespective of the size of its population and territory. They are elected by direct equal voting for a term of six years. Their term of office begins next January after the election year. Every two years, a third of the senators are subject to run for their seats again. The 435-person House of Representatives is elected by direct equal majority voting for a term of two years on the principle of the number of representatives of each state being proportional to the number of the population in the state.
The term of office for the House of Representatives of every convocation is two years. The House of Representatives consists of – without the right to vote – the resident commissar of Puerto Rico, delegates from the federal district of Columbia, Guam, the US Virginian Islands and US Western Samoa. The delegates enjoy the deliberative vote. The 109th Congress convened on January 4, 2005. The Republican Party holds the majority in both houses.

Executive power is vested in the president who is dual-hatted as the commander-in-chief of the US Armed Forces. The president appoints secretaries by approbation of the Senate. Congress cannot give a no-confidence vote to the administration.
Each state has its own legislative and executive authorities, whose organization and competence is determined by its constitution. The states’ legislative bodies are their single- or bicameral legislatures. Executive power in each state is vested in the governor elected by the popular vote for a term of two to four years.

Judicial power: a peculiarity of the US judicial system is the fact that there is no united, national judicial system. Instead, there are independent parallel judicial systems in each state, on the one hand, and the federal judicial system, on the other. Under Article 3 of the US Constitution, judicial power of the United States is vested in the Supreme Court of the United States and lower federal courts established by Congress. At the federal level, the Federal Judiciary consists of courts of four types – district, special, appellate and special appellate ones headed by the Supreme Court.

The national holidays are Independence Day on July 4 (since 1776), George Washington’s Birthday on February 22 and Veterans’ Day on November 11.

The principal economic indices are as follows:
The United States yields over 25% of the global GDP and about 15% of international trade. In 2004, the US GDP grew by 4.4% to about $12 trillion. Despite the growth of consumer prices by 2.7%, the inflation rate remained within 1.5%.
In FY2004, the federal budget deficit totaled $412 billion, with the state debt exceeding 7.5 trillion.
The export of goods and services in 2004 amounted to $1,146 trillion and the import to $1,764 trillion.
The foreign trade deficit equaled $617.7 billion (5.3% of the GDP), having grown by $120.8 billion over 2003.
The 2004 unemployment rate is 5.5% of the gainfully employed population.

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