Many environmentalists, and some economists, say that free trade encourages industry to relocate to countries with ineffective or poorly enforced antipollution laws, mostly in the developing world, and that, in order to maintain competitiveness, rich nations have joined this downward slide toward more lax attitudes about pollution.

A. that, in order to maintain competitiveness, rich nations have joined this downward slide toward more lax attitudes about pollution

B. that, for maintaining competitiveness, rich nations join in this downward slide toward more lax attitudes about pollution

C. that rich nations join this downward slide toward more lax attitudes about pollution because of wanting to maintain competitiveness

D. that in rich nations, joining this downward slide toward more lax attitudes about pollution is a result of wanting to maintain competition

E. that wanting to maintain competition is making rich nations join in this downward slide toward an attitude about pollution that is more lax

What is wrong in B and why A is correct > I presume B is correct "free trade encourages" and "rich nations join" are parallel
This GMAT prep question

A is Correct because of proper Tense Sequence.


B is supperficial Parallelisim one ---Say can be Parallel to encourage Join.

Whereas in A the Sequence of events is correctly laid out ---The Laws Encourages and to Maintain competition the countries HAVE joined.

Just to add I think ARE JOINING is better than Join in the context Presented.

MGMAT Tutors please comment.

here are a couple of problems with choice b:
- 'for maintaining competitiveness' is bad idiomatic usage: it's an incorrect way to express intent or purpose. (the construction in choice a is surprisingly wordy - in order to could be replaced with just to, with no loss of meaning - and might not make it onto the real exam.)
- 'rich nations join in this downward slide': fatal change in meaning. this wording implies that the rich nations are colluding with each other, metaphorically holding hands, deciding together to become more lax about pollution. (choice a expresses the correct meaning, which is that the slide is happening and that rich nations are individually joining it.)
- the simple present tense join implies that there is some sort of timeless truth about the statement being made. that's the wrong meaning: the sentence is meant to say that the rich nations have begun to do this as a result of current trends. if you don't understand the difference, consider the following analogous examples:
private universities have admitted more females than males --> meaning: this is an ongoing or cumulative trend, continuing into the present from some designated starting point
private universities admit more females than males --> meaning: this is a fundamental truth about the way private universities operate

are joining would make sense, but it would also fundamentally alter the meaning of the original.
have joined (the original) means that the joining has already happened (although its effects continue and are relevant to the present-day situation). are joining, on the other hand, would imply that rich nations are just starting to join up.

remember that you generally shouldn't change the meaning of the original sentence at all, unless the original is total nonsense.

I have two questions about choice C and D.

C. that rich nations join this downward slide toward more lax attitudes about pollution because of wanting to maintain competitiveness

Is choice C wrong because of the following reasons?
(1) wrong tense: present perfect tense should be used instead of present simple tense
(2) the usage of "because of V-ing" is unidiomatic

In choice D:
D. that in rich nations, joining this downward slide toward more lax attitudes about pollution is a result of wanting to maintain competition

Could you please explain to me why (D) is wrong?

Thanks in advance!

Just one more question here... can you please help me understand the usage of say that . I was under the assumption say that is not preferred in GMAT.

TIA

correct.



the way in which that choice is divided is strange -- it suggests that we are talking about some phenomenon that happens *in* rich nations, rather than talking about the actual actions of rich nations.
i.e., the writing of this sentence suggests that, *in* rich nations, *someone* is joining the downward slide -- but we don't know who.

also, "is a result of VERBing" --> i'm not sure whether this is an actual idiom error, but, by comparison to the wording in choice (a), it's clearly inferior.

Hi, Ron, I find another problem in this sentence:
The meaning of words: competivitness vs. competition.
Actualy, the original meaning is to maintain "competivitness", but not "competition."

Am I right?

yes, you are right.

“maintaining competitiveness” means that the nations in question want to remain competitive -- a meaning that makes sense in context.
“maintaining competition” would mean that they wanted to keep up the actual competition between nations -- in other words, to keep nations competing with each other. that doesn't really make much sense; the original wording is more appropriate.

Ron, in A, "have joined" dose not parallel with "encourages" .Pls, help.

of course they aren't parallel. why should they be?

_________________
Tim Sanders
Manhattan GMAT Instructor