Contradiction is a very strong word – you need two claims that cannot possibly both be true. A contradiction isn’t just “Parties are Bill’s favorite activity, but he hasn’t been to a party in ages.” A contradiction is “Parties are Bill’s favorite activity, but parties are not Bill’s favorite activity.”

Nothing like that happens here. Some arguments do operate by showing an opponent’s premises lead to a contradiction – it’s a method of reasoning called the reductio ad absurdum, and it usually stands out a mile because true contradictions like “I am a dog and also not a dog” are so jarring.

What false information are the automakers currently relying on? If (B) is right, we should be able to point it out. To underline it in the stimulus.

The automakers definitely made a claim back in the ‘60s that turned out to be false – they said meeting the 1970 restrictions wouldn’t be economically feasible, but that wasn’t true. We don’t know if that claim was based on false information, though, or any information at all – maybe the automakers were just lying.

And anyway, that was in the past. As for the automakers’ current claims, we don’t know what information, if any, those claims are based on. All we have in the stimulus are the claims themselves. And we certainly don’t know that information, if it even exists, is false.

For (C) to be right, the stimulus would need to feature a full argument from the automakers with premises and a conclusion. We don’t have that, though – all we have from the automakers are raw claims given without support.

This matches our anticipation perfectly – the stimulus uses an argument by analogy between past and present, saying “the automakers were wrong in the past, so they’re probably wrong now.”

(E) is wrong because we can’t point to anything in the stimulus that does exactly what (E) says. In other words, if (E) is right, we should be able to underline the part of the stimulus that provides evidence that directly proves the new legislation is both economically feasible and environmentally necessary.

At best, the argument by analogy implies the new legislation is economically feasible (because automakers might develop some new tech like the catalytic converter), but even that analogy is silent on the question of whether the regulations are environmentally necessary.