France may block the EC’s acceptance of a new farm—trade deal and thereby (wreck) the Uruguay round of GATT talks.

The shortage of higher quality coffee results in the black coffee market.

To promote trade and innovation, the draft agreement offers new safeguards to owners of intellectual property. It brings trade in services into the GAIT for the first time, opening new foreign markets to efficient producers of services in America and Europe. America’s ambitious early goals for farm-trade liberalization will not be fully met by the compromise that is now within reach; but even in farming, a half-successful round will deliver great benefits. And if this package can be banked, future rounds will be obliged to argue over how much to cut farm protection, not whether—an achievement in itself.

The quotas can be adjusted according to the world coffee market prices.

Importing countries like to buy coffee in the black market because of its lower price.

A black market usually means an illegal market.

Passage 2

The International Coffee Agreement (ICA) was set up in 1963 to try to stop the drift of prices, and to “stabilize prices above their free market level.”It did this by regulating the supply of coffee beans coming on to the world market. Producing countries each agreed to export a “quota”, a certain quantity of coffee, which was a little less than they would have normally exported without controls. By exporting slightly less than they might have done, the producing countries received a higher price per bag—and their overall revenues were higher. When coffee prices rose, producing countries were allowed an increase in their quota; when prices fell their quotas decreased.The agreement managed the market in a modest way but its biggest problem was that a timebomb (定时炸弹) marked “overproduction”was persistently ticking away underneath it—and finally exploded. Coffee producers had constrained their exports but not their output. This led to a huge build-up of stocks that countries could not sell, and it was clear that when the agreement ended, many of the stocks would be released on to the world market and the price would plummet.The United States wanted larger quotas to be given to the producers of the higher quality Arabica coffees. And like other importing countries it wanted action to end the black market in international coffee trade, whereby countries traded their surplus unofficially, at a price sometimes only half that of the official world market price; half-price was thought better than dumping coffee beans in the sea or letting them rot.

The export quota agreed was less than the output of the coffee producing countries.

To promote import, the US devalued its currency.

The US economy will likely to avoid a recession.

Investors stay in the stock markers because they had a great tolerance for risk.

US securities are relatively safe for investors.