Research On Legal Issues Of Carbon Tariff Under WTO

In recent years, the issue of global warming has arose widespread concern fromnearly all the countries. However, because of the enormous contradictions betweenthe developed countries and the developing countries, the negotiations between themon many important issues yet to be completed and no mandatory binding agreementon international emission reduction has been reached so far. Therefore, with theconcern about the international competitiveness of domestic industries as well aspreventing carbon leakage, the developed countries headed by the United States (U.S.)and the European Union (EU) have adopted bills regarding "carbon tariff". Followingthe "carbon tariff" under " cap and trade system " established in Clean Energy andSecurity Act adopted by U.S., the EU included the Aerospace Industry into its CarbonEmission Trading System by bill in March2011, and the airline companies arerequired to pay for the emission tax for the emission exceeding the limit from January2012. This indicates that the "carbon tariff" measures implemented by the developedcountries headed by U.S and the EU have expanded to the international serviceindustry. Carbon tariff measures in the United States and the European Union havearoused strong dissatisfaction from the developing countries led by China and India,accusing the nature of the measures, is a new green trade barriers with an excuse ofenvironment protection and this unilateral measure would violate the relevant rulesunder WTO. This Article is divided into four parts. The first part briefly introduces thedefinition of "carbon tariff", the background of generation of "carbon tariff", as wellas its legislative practice. The second part explains: the policy reasons for "carbontariff", including the prevention of carbon leakage, prevention of decline ininternational competitiveness of domestic industries and the needs of the politics atdomestic level;"carbon tariff" is a kind of a border tax adjustment and its nature is anew green trade barrier; whether the provisions about border tax adjustment underWTO are applicable to "carbon tariff"; the feasibility of the discussion on "carbontariff" under the framework of WTO. The third part discusses whether the "carbontariff" would violate the relevant rules under WTO, such as GATT1994Article I MostFavored Nation Treatment Obligation, GATT1994Article III National TreatmentObligation and whether the general exemption under Article XX paragraph (b) andparagraph (g) would be applicable. It also concludes that the "carbon tariff" violatesthe relevant WTO rules and can not be exempted by Article XX. In the forth part, thisArticle discusses the global impact of "carbon tariff" and proposes to build amultilateral coordination mechanism on "carbon tariff" under WTO to deal with itsinfluence.