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  3. The American Industry A history of long and effortless success can be a dreadful handicap, but, if properly handled, it may

The American Industry A history of long and effortless success can be a dreadful handicap, but, if properly handled, it may

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问题                           The American Industry
    A history of long and effortless success can be a dreadful handicap, but, if properly handled, it may become a driving force. When the United States entered just such a glowing period after the end of the Second World War, it had a market eight times larger than any competitor, giving its industries unparalleled economies of scale.  Its scientists were the world’s best, its workers the most skilled. America and Americans were prosperous beyond the dreams of the Europeans and Asians whose economies the war had destroyed.
    It was inevitable that this primacy should have narrowed as other countries grew richer. Just as inevitably, the retreat from predominance proved painful. By the mid-1980s Americans had found themselves at a loss over their fading industrial competitiveness. Some huge American industries, such as consumer electronics, had shrunk or vanished in the face of foreign competition. By 1987 there was only one American television maker left, Zenith. (Now there is none: Zenith was bought by South Korea’s LG Electronics in July. ) Foreign-made cars and textiles were sweeping into the domestic market America’s machine-tool industry was on the ropes. For a while it looked as though the making of semiconductors, which America had which sat at the heart of the new computer age, was going to be the next casualty.
    All of this caused a crisis of confidence. Americans stopped taking prosperity for granted. They began to believe that their way of doing business was failing, and that their incomes would therefore shortly begin to fall as well. The mid-1980s brought one inquiry after another into the causes of America’s industrial decline. Their sometimes sensational findings were filled with warnings about the growing competition from overseas.
    How things have changed ! In 1995 the United States can look back on five years of solid growth while Japan has been struggling. Few Americans attribute this solely to such obvious causes as a devalued dollar or the turning of the business cycle. Self-doubt has yielded to blind pride. "American industry has changed its structure, has gone on a diet, has learnt to be more quick-witted," according to Richard Cavanagh, executive dean of Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government, "It makes me proud to be an American just to see how our businesses are improving their productivity," says Stephen Moore of the Cato Institute, a think-tank in Washington, DC. And William Sahlman of the Harvard Business School believes that people will look back on this period as "a golden age of business management in the United States. "  
The loss of U. S. predominance in the world economy in the 1980s is manifested in the fact that the American ______.
选项 A、TV industry had withdrawn to its domestic market
B、semiconductor industry had been taken over by foreign enterprises
C、machine-tool industry had collapsed after suicidal actions
D、auto industry had lost part of its domestic market
答案D
解析 A选项错误，因为第二段中说“到1987年，美国只剩下zenith这一家电视生产商。(现在这一家也没有了：zenith于7月被韩国LG电器公司收购。)”说明它连国内市场也保不住了。B选项错误，文中第二段最后一句提到，“在一段时间内，半导体制造业似乎要成为下一个受害者”，可是事实上没有。C选项中谈到的机床业已经自取灭亡的说法错误，因为文中提到机床制造业“岌岌可危”(on the ropes)，但是还没有灭亡。D项是合适的，因为第二段第六句提到，“进口车和纺织品横扫国内市场”。
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