In contemplating issues around international business, the macroeconomic competitiveness of a SME's country - such as your country's relative currency value, extent of the country's external indebtedness, effectiveness of the country's legal environment and so on - is of great importance to both purely domestically focused SMEs and internationally oriented SMEs.

What government policy or policies could be used to protect the negatively affected group of SA SMEs, and what strategic positioning of individual SMEs could enable them mitigate or overcome the envisaged negative impact.