Research On The Impact Of Carbon Tariff On China's Export Trade

In recent years,more and more attention has been paid to climate change and environmental issues,especially carbon emissions in international trade.The Kyoto Protocol has put forward specific emission reduction targets for developed countries.While developing countries do not have to undertake emission reduction obligations and receive support from developed countries for environmental technologies and funds.This has led developed countries to "leak carbon" to developing countries by importing to replace or transfer high-carbon industries because of differences in production costs.Developed countries propose to impose carbon tariffs on export products of countries that have not implemented comparable emission reduction measures based on “carbon leakage” and product competitiveness.In 2007,France first proposed to impose additional tariffs on the withdrawal of the United States from the Kyoto Protocol.Then in 2009,the US House of Representatives also passed the Clean Energy Security Act to establish carbon tariffs in the form of legislation.The proposal of carbon tariff has aroused extensive discussion in academic circles.The research on carbon tariff mainly focuses on three aspects,namely,the legitimacy of carbon tariff,the measurement of trade implied carbon and the economic impact of carbon tariff.Once developed countries impose carbon tariffs on developing countries,including China,they will inevitably have an impact on China's output,social welfare and export trade.Therefore,on the basis of previous studies on carbon tariffs,the essence of carbon tariff,the influence of carbon tariff and the countermeasures of carbon tariff are discussed.The impact of carbon tariff on China's economy is studied from two aspects: qualitative analysis and quantitative analysis.In the qualitative analysis,the effect of carbon tariff is similar to that of common tariff.Carbon tariff makes the product price of the taxing country rise,but the change of its social welfare is difficult to determine.For the taxed country,the carbon tariff results in the deterioration of the terms of trade,and product competitiveness and social welfare decline.In the quantitative analysis,based on the multi-region input-output model and GTAP model,the influence of China's foreign trade embodied carbon quantity and carbon tariff on domestic economic indicators is calculated.The study founds that China's trade implies a net export of carbon,and the export of embodied carbon is mainly concentrated in the chemical industry,non-metallic mineral manufacturing,metal smelting and processing manufacturing,electricity,natural gas and water production and supply industries and transportation industry.And the introduction of carbon tariffs has resulted in a reduction in China's GDP and social welfare.The carbon tariff will promote the optimization of China's export trade structure to a certain extent,the export share of carbon-intensive industries will decrease,and the corresponding export share of high-tech industries will expand.Carbon tariff is a difficult and challenge that our country must face in the future.We should seek the countermeasures of carbon tariff from the international and domestic levels.At the international level,it mainly discusses the legitimacy of carbon tariff under the framework of WTO,actively appeals to the WTO dispute settlement body to safeguard China's foreign trade interests.At the domestic level,in order to promote the energy saving and emission reduction and the development of low-carbon economy,we can improve the carbon tax and carbon emissions trading system,promote the diversification of market and the optimization and upgrading of export structure,raise the level of energy technology,improve the energy structure,and help the government and the market to guide the development of our country's energy saving and emission reduction.