Sentence Correction (SC) | Re: In contrast to the ongoing trade imbalances with China and Japan, the

Dear Experts,

Could you pls help on this?

1) The key of this problem is to know what things can be compared to "ongoing trade imbalances"?
TBH, I don't understand "the United States sold record exports" Is sold verb or adjective (past participle)

2) In (D) and (E), they are wrong because "Compared with" and "Compared to", because they compare "trade imbalances and US" ?

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