[单项选择] So Near and Yet So Far
In many examinations, 90% is an excellent score, deserving a prize and a handshake from the headmaster. In Geneva this week, only full marks would do, and the world’s trade ministers failed. No matter that they came closer to a deal than anyone should have expected. No matter that they stuck at it for nine days and several nights, in the longest ministerial meeting in the history of the World Trade Organization (WTO). No matter, too, that this time they parted in stunned disbelief, heads shaking, rather than in acrimony(刻薄), quarrel and spite, as at Cancun in 2003. They managed "convergence" on 18 of the 20 topics set before them by Pascal Lamy, the WTO’s director-general, but they stumbled on the 19th, a device for protecting farmers in developing countries against surges in imports. They never reached the 20th, cotton. Failed.
You can construct a plausible argument that the collapse of yet anoth
A. trade protectionism
B. developed countries’ limitation on importation
C. higher tariffs on successive stages of production
D. western countries’ economic punishment