What will "this country" refer to after mentioning a foreign state?

As far as I know, it is typical to refer to the country where the speaker lives as this country. For example, if a person lives in Great Britain and he wants to mention weather in Great Britain, he might say "Weather in this country is blahblahblah".

Now we have a text written by a citizen of Great Britain saying something like "Patent law is quite complicated in the USA. In this country blahblahblah..."

What will "this country" naturally refer to in the second sentence - to the USA or to Great Britain? How would the author change his text so that it is clear that the second sentence also refers specifically to the USA or to Great Britain?

Solution 1:

Are you the reader or the writer? When writing, if there is even the slightest doubt or room for interpretation, I don't use "this", but repeat the proper name. I have yet to see a downside to this.

If you are the reader, you will simply have to consider all the contextual clues, and perhaps sigh deeply at writing which distracts you from the content itself.

Having said that, "this" should properly refer to the nearer thing (the writer's country) and "that" to the further thing (the other country).

Solution 2:

Assuming the author & likely reader lives and works in Great Britain, this country probably refers to Great Britain. If they had written in that country blah blah blah or There blah blah blah I'd think they meant the USA.