The imposition of quotas limiting imported steel will not help the big American steel mills. In fact, the quotas will...
GMAT Critical Reasoning : (CR) Questions
The imposition of quotas limiting imported steel will not help the big American steel mills. In fact, the quotas will help "mini-mills" flourish in the United States. Those small domestic mills will take more business from the big American steel mills than would have been taken by the foreign steel mills in the absence of quotas.
Which of the following, if true, would cast the most serious doubt on the claim made in the last sentence above?
Passage Analysis:
| Text from Passage | Analysis |
| The imposition of quotas limiting imported steel will not help the big American steel mills. |
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| In fact, the quotas will help "mini-mills" flourish in the United States. |
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| Those small domestic mills will take more business from the big American steel mills than would have been taken by the foreign steel mills in the absence of quotas. |
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Argument Flow:
The argument starts with a surprising claim that steel quotas won't help big American mills, then builds support by showing quotas will help mini-mills instead, and finally explains the mechanism - mini-mills will become stronger competitors than the foreign companies would have been
Main Conclusion:
Import quotas on steel will not help big American steel mills
Logical Structure:
The conclusion relies on a comparative harm argument: while quotas remove foreign competition, they create domestic competition (mini-mills) that will be even more damaging to big American steel companies than the original foreign threat
Prethinking:
Question type:
Weaken - We need to find information that would cast serious doubt on the claim that mini-mills will take MORE business from big American steel mills than foreign mills would have taken without quotas.
Precision of Claims
The key claim is comparative and quantitative - it's about the AMOUNT of business taken. We're comparing two scenarios: (1) business lost to foreign mills without quotas vs (2) business lost to mini-mills with quotas. The argument claims scenario 2 results in MORE loss for big mills.
Strategy
To weaken this claim, we need to find scenarios that suggest mini-mills WON'T take more business from big American mills than foreign mills would have. This could happen if: (1) foreign mills would have taken way more business than expected, (2) mini-mills can't actually compete effectively with big mills, or (3) there are market dynamics that limit how much mini-mills can grow at big mills' expense.
This choice tells us that quality matters more than price in steel selection. However, this doesn't help us determine whether mini-mills will take more business from big American mills than foreign mills would have. We don't know anything about the relative quality levels of mini-mills, big mills, or foreign mills from this statement, so it doesn't weaken the comparison being made.
This establishes that foreign steel quality matches big American mill quality. While this suggests foreign mills could have been strong competitors, it doesn't tell us anything about mini-mills' competitive position relative to either group. We still can't determine whether mini-mills will take more business than foreign mills would have, so this doesn't effectively weaken the argument.
This discusses retaliatory quotas that other countries might impose on American goods. This is about broader trade policy consequences and doesn't address the specific domestic competition between mini-mills and big American steel mills. It's completely irrelevant to whether mini-mills will take more business from big mills than foreign competitors would have.
This actually strengthens rather than weakens the argument. If mini-mills produce better steel than big American mills, this gives us even more reason to believe that mini-mills will successfully take business away from big mills once foreign competition is reduced by quotas.
This is the correct answer because it fundamentally undermines the argument's assumption. If mini-mills produce specialized, low-volume steels that big mills don't even make, then these two types of companies aren't really competing for the same customers or market segments. You can't 'take business' from a competitor if you're serving completely different markets. This makes the entire comparison meaningless - mini-mills flourishing wouldn't hurt big mills at all, regardless of what foreign mills might have done.