According to Donald Trump, “trade wars are easy to win.” 然而, as usual, reality appears to contradict Trump’s claims. In the current dispute between the U.S. and China, it doesn’t look like a winner will emerge any time soon. As CNN notes:
The Trump administration made good on its threat to raise tariffs on $200 billion worth of Chinese exports from 10% 至 25%, marking a sharp rise in tensions between the world’s two largest economies. After months of talks aimed at ending a year-long dispute that has already hurt global growth and rattled stock markets around the world, the latest US salvo risks triggering a new wave of tit-for-tat responses.
欢迎回到 商务英语播客for today’s商务英语词汇lesson on how to describe company performance.
Every company’s goal is to make a profit. But how they go about that is different. Different industries, different business models, different approaches – There’s no simple recipe for success. And there’s no simple, single way to measure whether a company is performing well.
代替, we look at many different factors when we measure company performance. We’ve also got a lot of different expressions in English for discussing the topic. And many of theseEnglish expressionsare what we call “collocations.”
What’s a collocation? Well, it’s just a natural combination of words. Ever heard the expressions “turn a profit” or “boost the bottom line?” We don’t say “grow a profit” or “up the bottom line.” Those simply aren’t natural collocations. And if you say something like that, you won’t sound natural.
So studying collocations is a great way to sound more natural with your vocabulary. You can learn combinations of words, rather than single words on their own. As you listen to the dialog today, try to pick out some of these collocations, 我们将稍后在汇报中讨论它们.
在对话框中, we’ll rejoin a meeting at a private equity firm. Three colleagues, 玛丽亚, 克劳迪娅, 和泰勒, are talking about some of the companies they’ve invested in. They’ll use lots of great collocations as they discuss the performance of these companies.
听力问题
1. What does Claudia think about SmartMoney? 2. What does Taylor think they should do before selling off SmartMoney? 3. What has Claudia been focusing on with Byron Industries?
Emerging markets have been through a lot over the past few years: The oil-price drop in 2014; China’s botched devaluation of its currency in 2015; and India’s bungled “demonetization” in late 2016. 今年, however, seems to be putting all that in the past, particularly for India. The BRIC nation has made strides in all areas which has led to a boom in business
Companies may seek ongoing funding through debt financing, or loans, which require collateral. Or they may use factoring and lines of credit to access cash quickly. Other sources of funds include crowdfunding and public offerings, in which a company sells shares.
