英语六级 2015年6月·第3套 · 真题整卷

What's the one word of advice a well-meaning professional would give to a recent college graduate? China? India? Brazil? How about trade?

When the Commerce Department reported last week that the trade deficit in June approached $50 billion, it set off a new round of economic doomsaying. Imports, which soared to $200.3 billion in the month, are subtracted in the calculation of gross domestic product. The larger the trade deficit, the smaller the GDP. Should such imbalances continue, pessimists say, they could contribute to slower growth.

But there's another way of looking at the trade data. Over the past two years, the figures on imports and exports seem not to signal a double-dip recession—a renewed decline in the broad level of economic activity in the United States—but an economic expansion.

The rising volume of trade—more goods and services shuttling in and out of the United States—is good news for many sectors. Companies engaged in shipping, trucking, rail freight, delivery, and logistics(物流) have all been reporting better than expected results. The rising numbers signify growing vitality in foreign markets—when we import more stuff, it puts more cash in the hands of people around the world, and U.S. exports are rising because more foreigners have the ability to buy the things we produce and market. The rising tide of trade is also good news for people who work in trade-sensitive businesses, especially those that produce commodities for which global demand sets the price—agricultural goods, mining, metals, oil.

And while exports always seem to lag, U.S. companies are becoming more involved in the global economy with each passing month. General Motors sells as many cars in China as in America each month. While that may not do much for imports, it does help GM's balance sheet—and hence makes the jobs of U.S.-based executives more stable.

One great challenge for the U.S. economy is slack domestic consumer demand. Americans are paying down debt, saving more, and spending more carefully. That's to be expected, given what we've been through. But there's a bigger challenge. Can U.S.-based businesses, large and small, figure out how to get a piece of growing global demand? Unless you want to pick up and move to India, or Brazil, or China, the best way to do that is through trade. It may seem obvious, but it's no longer enough simply to do business with our friends and neighbors here at home.

Companies and individuals who don't have a strategy to export more, or to get more involved in foreign markets, or to play a role in global trade, are shutting themselves out of the lion's share of economic opportunity in our world.

A recurring criticism of the UK's university sector is its perceived weakness in translating new knowledge into new products and services.

Recently, the UK National Stem Cell Network warned the UK could lose its place among the world leaders in stem cell research unless adequate funding and legislation could be assured. We should take this concern seriously as universities are key in the national innovation system.

However, we do have to challenge the unthinking complaint that the sector does not do enough in taking ideas to market. The most recent comparative data on the performance of universities and research institutions in Australia, Canada, USA and UK shows that, from a relatively weak starting position, the UK now leads on many indicators of commercialisation activity.

When viewed at the national level, the policy interventions of the past decade have helped transform the performance of U.K. universities. Evidence suggests the UK's position is much stronger than in the recent past and is still showing improvement. But national data masks the very large variation in the performance of individual universities. The evidence shows that a large number of universities have fallen off the back of the pack, a few perform strongly and the rest chase the leaders.

This type of uneven distribution is not peculiar to the U.K. and is mirrored across other economies. In the UK, research is concentrated: less than 25% of universities receive 75% of the research funding. These same universities are also the institutions producing the greatest share of PhD graduates, science citations, patents and licence income. The effect of policies generating long-term resource concentration has also created a distinctive set of universities which are research-led and commercially active. It seems clear that the concentration of research and commercialisation work creates differences between universities.

The core objective for universities which are research-led must be to maximise the impact of their research efforts. These universities should be generating the widest range of social, economic and environmental benefits. In return for the scale of investment, they should share their expertise in order to build greater confidence in the sector.

Part of the economic recovery of the UK will be driven by the next generation of research commercialisations spilling out of our universities. There are three dozen universities in the UK which are actively engaged in advanced research training and commercialisation work.

If there was a greater coordination of technology transfer offices within regions and a simultaneous investment in the scale and functions of our graduate schools, universities could, and should, play a key role in positioning the U.K. for the next growth cycle.