The Necessity And Countermeasures Of FTA Setting Carbon Footprint Trade Barriers

As a special kind of public goods, climate consumption can’t avoid "free-rider" problem. For a long time, the international community hopes that international negotiation and cooperation could alleviate the impact of the global greenhouse effect, but the talks haven’t worked well. As the first phase of the Kyoto Protocol’s commitments to expire, many countries will not make commitments to the second stage. In spite of it, many developed countries (including U.S.) have realized that the low carbon economy will be the next point of the global economic growth, and they try their best to put the developing countries, especially China and India, into the emission reduction system. Carbon tariffs, carbon emissions trading system and carbon footprint labels have become trade measures taken by the developed countries. On one hand, they have reversed transmission effects on developing countries, on the other hand, it’s good for developed countries to establish protection system for the domestic market of environmental protection products, new energy strategy and so on.To get intuitively clear understanding of carbon footprint trade barriers, this paper has used forms and graphs to illustrate, and the content will be discussed by taking the method of comparative analysis. The paper’s content is mainly divided into three major parts:the reason for the emergence of the carbon footprint trade barriers and its characteristic, the necessity of FTA setting carbon footprint trade barriers, the carbon footprint trade barriers china may meet under FTA and some countermeasures.In the first part, the article explains the reason why carbon footprint barriers appear from the perspective of the international, the nation and the system itself. And this paper compares the carbon footprint trade barriers, green trade barriers and technical barriers. At last it is concluded that the carbon footprint trade barriers have more legitimacy, rationality, concealment and bias.The part of "the necessity of FTA setting carbon footprint trade barriers" is a focus in the study of this article. The paper selects U.S.-Singapore FTA, U.S.-South Korea FTA, EU and NAFTA to study. The paper puts U.S.-Singapore and U.S.-South Korea two FTAs into a comparison first, and analyzes that how FTA sets carbon footprint trade barriers. For the European Union, This paper mainly analyzed European Union emission reduction policies, as well as influence of the carbon footprint. There is a comparison between the EU eco-label and carbon footprint label, and EU will also integrated footprint information into the eco-label. Differentiated market access for goods within the EU will have an influence on the flow of products. In NAFTA, the study finds that Canada and Mexico have greater dependence on NAFTA. Mexico has a risk of "carbon leakage" and its commodity has competitive disadvantage in low carbon market. Now Mexico is actively planning its own carbon footprint system. The study finds that FTA has chance to set carbon footprint trade barriers in the short term, and the spillover effect of the carbon footprint of trade barriers in FTA maybe more evident than outside of FTA. Besides, carbon footprint of trade barriers may strengthen the rule of origin in FTA.In the last part, this paper introduces the situation of FTA established with China at first, and finds that China is most likely to meet the carbon footprint trade barriers of China-South Korea FTA and China-Japan-South Korea FTA. Then it aims at urgency of building system of carbon footprint in China. There are three advices on China:first, Pay attention to both of the domestic and foreign markets at the same time, avoiding becoming a high carbon product dumping market. Second, the enterprise should optimize supply chain management and develop low-carbon technologies, etc. Country needs to invest of the new energy and low-carbon technologies, especially for small and medium-sized enterprises which have low carbon competitive advantage. Thirdly, making full use of framework of FTA to promote carbon footprint label recognition and reduce market access barriers.