For a trade embargo against a particular country to succeed, a high degree of both international accord and ability to prevent goods from entering or leaving that country must be sustained. A total blockade of Patria’s ports is necessary to an embargo, but such an action would be likely to cause international discord over the embargo.
The claims above, if true, most strongly support which of the following conclusions?
(A) The balance of opinion is likely to favor Patria in the event of a blockade.
(B) As long as international opinion is unanimously against Patria, a trade embargo is likely to succeed.
(C) A naval blockade of Patria’s ports would ensure that no goods enter or leave Patria.
(D) Any trade embargo against Patria would be likely to fail at some time.
(E) For a blockade of Patria’s ports to be successful, international opinion must be unanimous.
Solution
Passage Analysis
| For a trade embargo against a particular country to succeed, a high degree of both international accord and ability to prevent goods from entering or leaving that country must be sustained. | In this statement, the author presents two pre-conditions under which a trade barrier against a country is successful. These conditions are:
(1) Great degree of international agreement (2) Ability to execute the barrier: stopping the entry and exit of goods from the country against on which the barrier has been imposed. |
| A total blockade of Patria’s ports is necessary to an embargo, but such an action would be likely to cause international discord over the embargo. | In this statement the author presents a consideration. The author brings up the likelihood of an international disagreement over blocking a particular country’s (Patria’s) ports to make the trade barrier against it a success. |
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Pre-thinking
Please note that the passage ends at the statement that that blocking Patria’s ports is likely to lead to an international disagreement. Now since the question stem asks us to conclude for the given passage, we must take into account every piece of information given in it and frame a choice that does not require any outside information. So let’s get cracking.
So far we know that:
(1) Two necessary conditions for the success of a trade barrier:
- Great degree of international agreement
- Ability to execute the barrier
(2) Executing trade barrier on Patria is likely to lead to international disagreement
Now what can we possibly conclude from the given statements?
We know chances are that one necessary condition for the trade barrier against Patria to become success may not be fulfilled. Hence we can conclude that:
- A trade embargo against Patria is not likely to be successful.
Please note that since the author doesn’t concretely say that there will be a disagreement over the execution of the trade barrier, in our conclusion we cannot use a definitive word such as “will”.
With this understanding, let’s screen the answer choices.
Analysis of Option Statements
| (A) The balance of opinion is likely to favor Patria in the event of a blockade. | This option is incorrect. From the passage, we only that there will be disagreement over blockade. So, it means that at least one country will be against the blockade. However, “balance of opinion” means majority. We cannot conclude that majority of countries will support Patria. |
| (B) As long as international opinion is unanimously against Patria, a trade embargo is likely to succeed. | This option too is incorrect. In our passage analysis we clearly saw that for a trade barrier to succeed we need two pre-requisites. This choice says that one of them, namely international agreement, is enough. But what about the other condition? What about the execution of the barrier? Since this choice walks against the premise of the argument, this cannot be the correct choice. |
| (C) A naval blockade of Patria’s ports would ensure that no goods enter or leave Patria. | This option is incorrect. This choice merely provides us with some extra information about how the trade barrier will be executed in Patria’s case (through naval blocade) or the purpose behind blocking its ports ( to ensure that no goods enter or leave Patria) . If you notice the logical progression of the argument carefully, the author has already explicitly moved past the point of discussing the how and why aspect of the blockade of the ports. Towards the end of the argument, the author is concerned with the impact of the blockade. Since the correct conclusion choice will carry forward from this point, we can see that this answer choice is not a good fit for the same. Hence answer choice C is not correct. |
| (D) Any trade embargo against Patria would be likely to fail at some time. | This option is correct. This is in line with our pre-thinking. Please note the mild language of this answer choice:… would be likely to fail at some time.The language of this choice is in keeping with the stated opinion of the author:such an action would be likely to cause international discord over the embargoBoth the last statement and the answer choice, do not concretely state the predictions made. This clearly shows that answer choice D factors in the last statement and does not require any extra assumptions to be true; it follows the logical progression of the argument. Hence, this is the correct answer choice. |
| (E) For a blockade of Patria’s ports to be successful, international opinion must be unanimous. | This answer-choice is incorrect for two reasons:
(a) if you read carefully, this choice talks about the success of the blockade of Patria’s ports. However, the argument gives us no information regarding the same. The only information given to us is about the necessary pre-conditions of the success of a trade embargo and an implication of blocking Patria’s ports. So, this statement cannot be concluded. (b) Even if we put aside the distinction made above about the two different kinds of successes, we can see that the stated conclusion in this choice is not justified. Reason: As per one of the pre-conditions for the success of a trade embargo/barrier, there needs to be a high/greater than normal degree of international agreement. So it is NOT necessary that the international opinion has to be unanimous. A high degree would suffice. Hence answer choice E is not the correct answer. . |
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