PrepTest 103, Section 3, Question 16
The recently negotiated North American Free Trade Agreement(86 more words not shown)
The argument proceeds(1 more words not shown)
- Aruling out(1 more words not shown)
- Busing a term(4 more words not shown)
- Cciting a nonrepresentative(1 more words not shown)
- Dappealing to a(2 more words not shown)
- Eresponding to a(6 more words not shown)
Reading the argument
What restriction keeps this agreement from being truly free trade?
The author answers by citing Adam Smith's account: free trade requires unobstructed movement of goods, investment, and labor. The agreement still restricts workers at national boundaries. Under that definition, the labor restriction prevents completely free trade.
My first reaction is to think of worker movement as an immigration issue rather than a trade issue. But the definition the author has supplied expressly includes labor. We need to follow that definition to understand the reasoning, even if we would otherwise have used the phrase differently.
I would also ask whether the agreement improves on what came before. Something could fall short of perfectly free trade and still be a step toward it. Notice, though, that the author specifically calls the remaining obstruction harmful from a free-trade perspective. We shouldn't turn that into a broader claim that the entire agreement must be worse than the previous arrangement.
What we’re looking for
For the method question, I'd describe the move as citing an economist's definition and applying it to the agreement. Look for that use of an authority, not a verdict on whether every part of the trade policy is good or bad.
Working the answers
- A
The author doesn't compare several possible agreements or eliminate alternative explanations. The argument applies a stated account of free trade to a remaining restriction in this agreement. No process of ruling out competing options is given.
- B
The author uses the account of free trade consistently: barriers to goods, investment, or labor prevent it. Saying an agreement's name fails to live up to that account is not the same as quietly changing the term's meaning midway through the reasoning.
- C
A nonrepresentative example would involve taking a limited case and using it to stand for a broader set. For example, one freely traded product wouldn't by itself establish that an entire agreement creates free trade. But the author doesn't reason from a sample of products. The worker restriction is tested against a definition that excludes any such obstruction.
- DCorrect
Adam Smith is introduced as an economist who articulated the principles of free trade. The author relies on his account of what defeats free trade and applies it to the agreement's restriction on workers. That is an appeal to an authority relevant to the subject. It describes the method without requiring us to settle whether the authority's definition is the only reasonable one.
- E
The argument stays with whether the agreement provides truly free trade and how the remaining restriction looks from that perspective. Worker movement may initially seem like a different policy topic, but it belongs to the definition the author uses. Discussing it therefore addresses the stated issue rather than replacing that issue.
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