Do the following statements agree with the information given in the article?
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1. Corn harvest in America, Russia and Australia in 2012 enables them to raise stocks.
2. America eliminated the tariff on ethanol.
3. A fifth of America’s maize is turned into car’s fuel.
4. Following USA, 33 countries lifted export restriction on food.
5. When many countries ban food exports prices advance.
6. A spike in food prices solves the problem of income and jobs in the short-term.
7. Farm-trade restrictions eradicate poverty.
8. State support to Chinese farmers has halved since 2004.
9. Imposing restrictions, governments take counterproductive measures.
Exercise № 9
Suggest the Russian for the following word combinations.
world prices spiral upwards; wheat exporters; to cut poverty; to scrap a subsidy; the third food-price spike in five years; state support to farmers; to make matters worse; subsidized farming; to drive up grain prices; export ban; higher food prices; the proximate cause of the price rises; to turn away from volatile world markets.
Exercise № 10
Give English equivalents to the following word combinations.
уменьшить запасы; усугубить проблему; плохой урожай кукурузы; в долгосрочной перспективе; отменить тариф на импорт этанола; вмешательство государства в сельское хозяйство; на долю сельского хозяйства приходится менее 10% объема мировой торговли; вводить экспортные ограничения на продовольственные товары; стоимость жизни.
READING AND SPEAKING III
Read the article and do the assignments that follow.
Goodbye Doha, Hello Bali
The Doha trade talks are dead. Replace them with a rapid new deal, called the "Global Recovery Round"
Trade and growth go hand in hand. When the economic crisis first hit in 2008, world trade and growth collapsed together. In 2009 both recovered, and did reasonably well until this year, when both slipped again. Cutting tariffs and red tape would boost trade, and support the faltering recovery. This should spur efforts to replace the failed Doha trade talks with a new effort to do a multilateral deal.
The aims of the Doha round, launched by the World Trade Organisation (WTO) in 2001, were laudable. It deliberately put poor countries first, placing particular priority on improving the access of their farmers to rich-country markets. It was ambitious too, covering not only trade in manufactured goods, agriculture and services, but also a host of things more indirectly related to trade (antitrust, intellectual property and foreign-investment rules, for example). According to the Peterson Institute, a think-tank, the potential gains were around $280 billion a year. Its failure is a tragedy.
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The villains are powerful lobbies, notably in agriculture, such as America's cotton and sugar industries and Japan's rice farmers and fishermen. But there were also two structural problems with Doha. One was the number of countries. At the end of the first world-trade talks in 1947, 23 countries were involved. When Doha started, 155 were. Second, the idea was to achieve a grand bargain in which agriculture, manufacturing and services would all be liberalised. But reaching agreement on some areas was so difficult that the WTO’s mantra ─ "Nothing is agreed until everything is agreed" ─ proved fatal.
After many missed chances to conclude a deal, an "absolute deadline" was set for 31 December 2011. That too, was missed. Since then, protectionism has been intensifying. Argentina has lodged complaints against America over lemons and beef and against Spain over biofuels. Altogether, tit-for-tat actions mean that new restrictions cover 4% of global trade, more than Africa's exports. On the plus side, disputes over these are being adjudicated by the WTO system.
With Doha paralysed, regional alternatives to a multilateral deal are springing up. They are not all bad, but regional deals tend to benefit insiders at the expense of outsiders, so that global gains will be achieved only if they can be fitted together.
Many experts think that instead of allowing the Doha round to be replaced with a patchwork of regional deals, the WTO’s boss, Pascal Lamy, should close it and resurrect the best bits in a "Global Recovery Round". He should drop the all-or-nothing "single undertaking" rule that helped kill Doha. Instead, talks would be broken up into small chunks and allowed to progress independently of one another. Negotiations would be open, so that any member could leave or join. Some deals, therefore, would not include everyone. But another of the WTO’s guiding principles ─ the "most-favoured-nation" clause ─ must apply. This rule means that any deal between a smaller group must be applied to all WTO members, even if they do not reciprocate, WTO-brokered regionalism would thus lower trade barriers for all.
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The Global Recovery Round should focus on manufacturing and services. Manufacturing represents around 55% of total trade. There is much to be gained: tariffs on cars, buses and bicycles are still high. Even low-tariff countries maintain a selection of high ones. In America ski boots attract a zero tariff, but golf shoes can face a 10% rate, and steel-toe-capped boots 37.5%. Services, which account for only 20% of world trade but are more important on a value-added basis, have hardly been liberalised at all.
The Economist, September 8th, 2012
*laudable – похвальный, достойныйпохвалы
**villain – злодей, негодяй, преступник
***tospurпобуждать, поощрять
****to resurrect– возрождать
USEFUL TERMS AND EXPRESSIONS
· faltering – неуверенный, нерешительный, неустойчивый
· to lodge a complaint – подаватьжалобу
· to adjudicate a dispute – рассматриватьспор
· toreciprocate – 1) отвечать взаимностью;2) отвечать, отплатить
Answer the questions.
1. What happened to trade and growth when the economic crisis hit the world in 2008?
2. What were the aims of the Doha round and why did the talks fail?
3. What appeared as an alternative to a multilateral deal?
4. What is the drawback of regional deals?
5. Why is a Global Recovery Round considered by experts to be a better alternative?
6. What should the Global Recovery Round focus on?
Exercise № 11
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