The United States has never been a great international trader. It found most of its raw materials and customers for f...
MrLawMarch 31, 2020
Answer E
I don't understand E either. There is significantly more support for questioning the ethical basis of an economic situation than there is for appealing to historical fact. The author makes a judgement call when he/she alludes to 'terrible consequences' and then discusses a large foreign debt and being a playground for wealthy foreign investors.
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Thanks for the question! The author in this passage is saying that the US has never been a great international trader, which has resulted in bad consequences, namely a large foreign debt and heavy foreign investment in the US. The author then concludes that countries need foreign trade.
Now we need to find methods of reasoning that the author does not use.
The author draws on an analogy in the last sentence by comparing the country to a dog. The author appeals to historical fact in the second sentence. The author identifies a cause and effect by saying that large foreign debt has come from not having enough international trade; by doing so, the author also suggests a cause of the current economic situation. The author does not, however, question the ethical basis of an economic situation. We aren’t told anything about the ethics. “Terrible consequences” aren’t necessarily terrible in the ethical sense; they could just be objectively terrible economical consequences, with no sort of normative judgment. This is why we eliminate (A)-(D), but keep (E).
Hope this helps! Feel free to ask any further questions that you might have.
