Passage 1
What is more, currency movements over the past year have unexpecte made matters worse for many producers. In the first half of the 1980s, it was conventional wisdom to say that the exceptional strength of the dollar was partly responsibl

Passage 1
What is more, currency movements over the past year have unexpecte made matters worse for many producers. In the first half of the 1980s, it was conventional wisdom to say that the exceptional strength of the dollar was partly responsible for——and helped to offset——the increasing weakness of dollar-dominated commodity prices.【All other things】 being equal, so the argument went, subsequent 【fall in the dollar】 might be expected to give a compensating 【boost】 to dollar commodity prices.
38.Why should the"boost"have been a compensating one?

The usage of cmpensating implies that once the US currency movement had the dollar commodity price suffer a loss.