Trade official: Country X deserves

Answer choices

1. A

   Irrelevant Comparison2% picked this

   Agricultural components of international trade are more important than

   The author isn't Weighing Tradeoffs between agricultural components of trade and nonagricultural commodities. She doesn't need to believe that agricultural components are more important than nonagricultural commodities. She only needs to assume that the high demand in our country for agricultural commodities from Country X is important enough that it could override our desire to punish Country X for its protectionism.

   2%
2. B

   Opposite2% picked this

   The ability to keep popular products available domestically is less important than our being able

   This speaks to the Weighing Tradeoffs part of the author's calculus, but it's written in the opposite direction. In choosing to sell the agricultural equipment to Country X, the author is thinking that "the ability keep popular products available domestically (the ability to satisfy the high demand for agricultural products from X) is more important than dealing with protectionism." Protectionism is sort of the opposite of free trade. With free trade, producers from our country can enter international markets in other countries (and vice versa). But if those other countries are protectionist, then they'll slap steep tariffs on our goods or put up other barriers of entry that lock us out of that market. So "being able to enter international markets" is probably meant as a logical opposite for "being protectionist". But we don't have to think that hard if we see that this answer is saying "satisfying the high demand to keep popular Country X agricultural products in supply" is less important. After all, this high demand seems to be our author's main motivating concern.

   2%
3. C

   Too Strong: never30% picked this

   We should never jeopardize the interests of our people to punish

   This argument is only about Country X. The author hasn't committed herself to the crazy extreme idea that we should never ever jeopardize the interests of our people to punish a protectionist country. The author is just assuming that, "In this case, we shouldn't jeopardize the interests our people have in X's agricultural imports in order to punish a protectionist country".

   30%
4. D

   Too Strong: most2% picked this

   In most cases, punishing a protectionist country should have priority over the interests

   This argument is only about Country X. The author hasn't committed herself to the specific idea that in more than 50% of cases, we would take the opposite course of action. The author is assuming that, "In this case, punishing a protectionist country has lower priority than the interests of our people". We don't know whether the author thinks that usually punishing the protectionist has a lower / equal / higher priority.

   2%
5. E

   Correct63% picked this

   We should balance the justice of an action with the consequences for our interests of

   Why this is right

   This speaks to the Weighing Tradeoffs part of the argument. The just action would be to refuse to sell agricultural equipment to X, since X is being obnoxiously protectionist and deserves retribution. But undertaking that action would have consequences for our country's interests (presumably, we wouldn't be able to satisfy the high demand for agricultural imports from X). This answer is the softer version of (C). (C) was saying that we will never jeopardize our country's interests to punish a protectionist country. But maybe this author would be happy to punish X if there were only low / moderate demand for their agricultural products. That would still jeopardize our country's interests, but since our country's interests wouldn't be particularly strong, it might be a tolerable price to pay for getting to punish X's protectionism. (E) meanwhile is not making it sound like one thing always wins over the other. It's just saying that both things should be balanced against each other. Clearly, our author believes this, because she's doing just that. X deserves punishment. However, it's crucial we recognize overriding considerations. That indicates that the justice of punishing X is being balanced with some other consideration. The argument goes on to say that this overriding consideration is our country's interest in getting agricultural imports back from X. The author is implying that by giving X the agricultural equipment, we'll be in a better position in regards to X's agricultural exports.

   Skill tested: Principle-Conform · how this choice captures the argument's function is the move to repeat next time.

   63%