The Impact Of EU Carbon Tax To China’s External Trade And Welfare

As the progress of the society, people gradually realized the importance of environmental protection. In1992, United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change had been passed through at the international climate change negotiations. After that, the Kyoto Protocol was signed, in which the responsibility on greenhouse gas reduction around the world has been declared. But in the process of the development of industrialized countries, a large amount of greenhouse gases had been discharged, then these industrialized countries also have the obligation to draft the legislation that related to greenhouse gas reduction, and it is also consistent with the common interests of mankind. However, some developed countries as the EU and the United States adopted various means to evade the responsibility in order to avoid their industries from being impacting, and keep their international competitiveness.In2009, because of the huge pressure of consensus in the international community, the U.S. government changed its consistent negative attitude in greenhouse gas reduction, drafted and passed the American clean energy and security act. After the financial crisis, all western developed countries are thinking out the way to get rid of the financial crisis’ influence, under this background, the western developed countries had been inspired by the ACES, by using the green barrier as the carbon tariffs to build up trade restrictions on China and other developing countries. At the same time, the European Union has also passed the related plans, after the year2012, European Union Emission Trading System will be extended to the international aviation industry, which means the EU will levy the carbon tariffs from all the flights that access over the EU.Under the process of global economic development, the levy of carbon tariff has a nature of green trade barriers, by levying the carbon tariff, the developed countries protect their domestic trade of related products in the name of environment protecting. The significance of this paper is to understand the essence of carbon tariff correctly, and make it clear what influence on our country’s economy that caused by the carbon tariff, then we can reduce the negative impact and expand the positive effects.Firstly, this paper introduces the concept and types of carbon tariffs, and clarifies the nature and essence of carbon tariff, to build up the basis of the research on influence factors China’s trade of carbon tariff. At the same time, this paper clarify the reason of the developed countries such as the EU strongly advocated the levy of carbon tariff, so that we can put forward the solutions of carbon tariff. Then we comb and summary the literature abroad and inland, conclude that carbon tariff is essentially a new type of green trade barriers that the developed countries throw on developing countries. In addition, this part also summarizes researches of carbon tariff in or out of our country, and clarifies the essence of carbon tariff, its legal validity, and the effects to the trade and the welfare, specific calculation of greenhouse gas emissions in international trade, so that we can facilitate the follow-up study.Then based on this, in the perspective of the EU economic factors, the characteristics of Chinese exports to the EU and Chinese enterprise characteristics, this paper expounds the reason of the EU implement the carbon tariff to our country. By analyzing the reason of the EU carbon tariffs and other trade protection measures to our country, we can be more pertinent on making policy and advice. Then by discussing the EU carbon tariff, the emissions trading scheme of the EU, the current situation, feature and performance analysis of the EU carbon emissions system, we can sum up the possible effect that could come to our country, then we can make brief coping strategyCarbon tariffs can affect our country’s export trade as the green trade barriers. The imposing of carbon tariff can make the high carbon industry offshore to develop, and put more pressure to the economic development of our country. This will make some enterprises in China put some products that cannot meet the requirements of the export into domestic market, and break the original balance of supply-demand relationship. It will make the development of global free trade worse, and then the common social welfare of domestic consumers would be damaged. What is worse, it would make our manufacturing enterprises lose their original advantages on international competitiveness. In addition, the imposing of the carbon tariff will influence the enterprise in our country a lot. Firstly, carbon tariff will make most of the enterprises in China depend too much on foreign advanced low carbon technologies, and the balance of low carbon technology market will be impacted, the low carbon technologies’prices would be artificially high, then influence the balanced development of low carbon products market in China. Secondly, as China depends too much on the export market of the developed countries, once the carbon tariff starts to impose, the international market that the export enterprises used to have will be closed, those enterprises could not implement long-term plan, and eventually their development would be hindered. Finally, the private enterprises in China will get into a survival crisis under the influence of carbon tariff. Carbon tariffs, of course, also have the positive impact on our country:firstly, it will cause low carbon technology innovation of our country. Secondly, it will promote the upgrading of industrial structure of the related industry in China. Thirdly, form the regression effect of comparative advantage. Fourthly, it will expand the foreign investment.By building up the CGE model, the analyzing of the data, and the forecasting the influence to the foreign trade, production industry and welfare of our country by carbon tariff, we get the simulation results which are roughly the same with the theoretical analysis results in the third chapter, the theoretical analysis results had been further verified, and provide the basses for the following proposal.Finally based on the above analysis, this paper puts forward some proposals in two aspects as international and domestic on the imposing of carbon tariff to our country. At the domestic level, we put forward the following three suggestions:first of all, at the industry trade level, our country should focus on the optimization of industrial structure and the improvement of the export structure; Secondly, at the development of science and technology level, our country should pay more attention to the strengthening of independent intellectual property rights of low carbon technology development, and seek energy substitution actively; Thirdly, in terms of policies and regulations, our country should pay more attention to guide the citizen’s consumption concept actively, make the transition to low carbon market better, and limit the transfer of high carbon industry form the developed countries to our country, at the same time, the learning of advanced experience on the control of greenhouse gas in foreign countries should be encouraged, then establish the system of carbon tax in our country. At the international level, this paper puts forward the suggestions as followed:firstly, participate in international negotiations actively, and undertake tasks that are reasonable to reduce greenhouse gas emissions voluntarily, so that we can build up an environmental image of our country; Secondly, within the framework of the WTO, we should take countermeasures to the EU carbon tariffs; Thirdly, we should reduce the dependence on exports to the EU; Fourthly, by the legal means, we should seek the exemptions for EU carbon tariff tax, and take some countermeasures on carbon tariffs.