Chapter 1 Government and Trade
Exercise 1
1) Trade will top the EU’s agenda at this summit.
2) Hillary Clinton has promised to review trade agreements every five years and amend them where necessary.
3) The agreement is about putting a textile-import monitoring system in place for 2008 to replace the annual cap imposed on imported Chinese textiles since 2005. 4) China Investment Corp (CIC) is a sovereign wealth fund. 5) They are not sure about how the fund will operate....
6) The European Council, the European Commission, the European Parliament 7) “institutional-complexity issue” refers to the following problems: a. the member states do not always agree;
b. there is also policy disagreement among the EU’s various institutions;
c. even within one institution, its various departments may also find themselves in disputes EU’s self-imposed obstacles: a. the institutional complexity
b. the absence of a central authority c. fickle priorities
8) “fickle priorities” means one is changeable about what is the most important or what he or she should focus on.
9) “hackles” means anger. A meeting in September between Angela Merkel, chancellor of Germany, and Tibet’s exiled leader, the Dalai Lama, brought about anger in China. Exercise 2
1) F, 2) T, 3) T, 4) F, 5) F, 6) F, 7) F, 8) F, 9) F, 10) F 11) T 12) T Exercise 3
1) 双边关系；欧元区；主权财富基金；贸易协定；贸易法案；惹怒；经济关系；汇率；货
币政策；升温
2) current-account surplus; election campaign; member states; aside from; export subsidies; hang
over; consumer perception; on behalf of; intellectual property; foreign takeover Exercise 4
1) Interest and attention on the new EU-Russia trade agreement gained momentum after EU
leaders’ travel to Russia in May in an attempt to resolve their differences across a range of issues.
2) He sat down and fired off a furious letter to the Indian government, describing a radical
change of the US policy towards textile imports.
3) The Republican leadership in the U.S. government will soon lift its cap on cigar imports from
Cuba, replaced by a monitoring system which will be put in place for 2008.
4) This renowned economist proposed that the Finnish government set up a sovereign wealth
fund, modeled on China Investment Corp (CIC).
5) Before the bilateral free-trade agreement these two countries reached in 2007, their strategic
sectors, such as cotton and woolen, electronics, mining, car producing, etc. had been off limits to foreign investors.
6) “Aside from the technical difficulties, there are heavy financial and political costs associated
with the measures necessary to reduce the emission of greenhouse gases,” said an expert at
this year’s Sino-Korea summit.
7) As negotiations continued last night in Tokyo, Japanese government officials said they were
hopeful they could pull off a summit with China in Beijing but stressed nothing had been finalized.
8) In a previous career, I spent many years negotiating on behalf of the EU with the Russian and
Chinese governments on everything from Siberian overflight rights to the terms of China’s accession to the World Trade Organisation.
9) Mexico and the US squabbled over poultry imports, which may disrupt the lifting of the
agricultural tariffs under the North American Free Trade Agreement.
10) Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) Business Forum 2007 will take place shortly
before the WTO ministerial conference in Hong Kong next month. Exercise 5
1)-5) Russian; bilateral; accession; little; supplies; 6)-10) issued; political; domestic; EU; sectors Exercise 6
那么，这届中欧峰会成功吗？这当然取决于与会者如何定义成功，但根据最乐观的看法， 欧盟谈判代表可能只带着一点小成果回家。除了来自中国方面所预料之内的阻力，代表们还有来自欧盟自身的障碍需要克服。首先，欧盟体制的复杂性使该组织很难以一个声音说话。成员国之间并不总是意见一致。如何才能制定正确的货币政策，法国和德国一直争执不下。这种分歧影响了欧盟采用什么方式管理欧元兑人民币汇率。此外，欧盟各机构之间也有政策分歧，这包括欧洲理事会，欧盟委员会和欧洲议会。最近，就在欧盟委员会内部，各部门之间就发生了一场公开的争论，关于是否取消对从中国进口的节能灯泡征收反倾销税。
具体的表现有：在这次峰会上，欧洲方面将由欧洲理事会主席葡萄牙总理若泽·苏格拉底，欧盟委员会主席巴罗佐·若泽·曼努埃尔，和曼德尔森先生分别代表。更甚的是，欧元区代表将不为英国这种未加盟欧洲国家代言，而法国总统尼古拉·萨科奇则预计在此次峰会前不久做出自己的北京之行。
由于所有这些访客形形色色，如果中方揣测该与哪位谈判，这会是情有可原的。欧盟的确没有中央集权制，这也就意味着该机构缺乏能力，难以就议程包罗的不同问题加以权衡和取舍。如果设有一位至高无上的谈判代表，他就能正视议题，譬如在纺织品谈判中采取较温和的立场，以换取中国在货币政策或出口补贴方面更大胆的让步。但由于欧盟的各个机构分别负责不同议题，要与中方在诸如此类的问题上达成交易则会困难重重。
Chapter 2 Products and Pricing
Exercise 1
1. Wal-Mart began selling the product for a very low price and the super-cheap gallon jar cannibalized Vlasic’s other channels and shrank its margins by 25%. When Vlasic asked for pricing relief, Wal-Mart responded by refusing an immediate price increase and reviewing its commitments to the line. Vlasic had filed for bankruptcy.
2. The crucial disparity is in strategic perspective. Vlasic used a short-term sales strategy. Nike, on the other hand, positioned itself for the long term.
3. With scanner data, managers can see that price reductions coincide with sharp increases in sales to consumers.
4. Changes in consumer behavior; diluted brand equity; competitive response.
5. This difference can be ascribed, in part, to the fact that weekly data recognize increases in purchases but ignore subsequent competitive price reactions and changes in consumer behavior.
Nonetheless, the increased availability of short-term data dramatically affects perceptions of the value of promotions.
6. First, advertisers who test their ads in the market can isolate the campaigns that will increase revenues over the long term, since advertisements that are successful in the short run also have a positive long-term effect. Second, even campaigns that don’t do much to boost sales can increase margins by differentiating brands and thus allowing companies to raise prices.
7. Increases in the length and variety of a product line play a major role in boosting a brand’s baseline sales. Moreover, increased product-line variety and distribution in leading retailers reduce consumers’ sensitivity to price.
8. Quantity and price premiums reflect a brand’s long-term health. If both increase, demand and margins will be higher-along with brand equity and profits. If consumers pay less of a premium for the brand and baseline demand is decreasing, then the brand is headed in the wrong direction-and the firm has a problem.
9. Armed with long-term metrics, firms and analysts can assume a longer-term perspective on the brand, leading to improved profitability.
10. Short-term decreases reflect the time it takes for consumers to acclimate to the price changes and respond to the advertising. Without long-term brand-health measures, the analyst may have come to a misleading conclusion about the value of the brand. Exercise 2
2) F, 2) F, 3) T, 4) F, 5) F, 6) T, 7) T, 8) T, 9) F, 10) T Exercise 3
1）consumer-goods 消费者商品 discount retailers 折扣零售商 brand equity 品牌资产价值 advertising budget 广告预算 real-time sales data 现时销售数据 sales promotion 促销 profit margin 赢利 scanner data 扫描数据
2）溢价 price premium 基线销售 baseline sales
减价 price reductions 广告支出 advertising spending 营销组合 marketing mix 加量 quantity premium 产品数量（种类） product quantity (variety) 美元分配 allocation of dollars Exercise 4
1) The government has allocated $ 0.1 billion to the development and utilization of renewable energy in rural areas.
2) We should not develop the Western region at the expense of environment. Therefore the government has been following a sustainable development road attaching equal importance to economic development and environmental protection.
3) As a big responsible nation, China will strictly abide by the WTO rules and honor its commitments.
4) The rapid growth in China’s grain production can be ascribed to the fact that the Chinese government has implemented a series of reform policy and measures in the rural areas, such as raising the prices of grain purchased by the state.
5) In the globalization era, not all countries play on the level playground. Some developing countries have to adhere to some marketing principles, or even accede to the requests of some governments.
商务英语阅读课后习题答案(王艳)
