Carbon Tariff On China's Export Trade

To pursue the rapid development of economy, we sacrifice our global ecological environment a lot which becomes more and more fragile. So it is become a common sense that every country should take correspondent measures to protect our earth for survival. However, some developed countries, with advanced technology and strong economy strength, make some environmental standards, which are very difficult for developing countries to follow. We called these phenomena as Green Trade Barrier, and Carbon tariff is exactly an extension or a new kind of Green Trade Barrier.So far, there is still no country impose carbon tariff on another country around the world, but some Northern European countries have already imposed tax upon carbon in their own countries. Carbon tariff aims at recover the loss of the competitive strength of the carbon emitting intensive products. From environmental point of view, imposing carbon tariff do have some good effects on reducing carbon dioxide emissions, adjustment of industrial structure and technological innovation. However, carbon tariff, as a new trade barrier, which requires developing countries to take responsibility of carbon reduction, violates the doctrine of national treatment of WTO and the fundamental principle of United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change. For China, we should resolve the side effects of imposing carbon tariff first, and make clear whether it would affect trade activities especially export trade or not. Based on this background, this paper analyses the effects of impose carbon tariff on export trade quantitatively. At the same time, this paper also provides the theoretical basis why should our economy shift from a high-carbon economy to a low-carbon economy, which is also consistent with the spirit of the 12th five years plan.This essay is divided into five chapters, the first chapter is introduction, mainly makes a recapitulative description of the background information,the meaning of this research and a summary of the present research at home and abroad; The second chapter of this essay is theoretical basis, mainly introduces the new trade protectionism theory, tariff theory, trade gravity model theory; The third chapter is qualitative analysis of carbon tariffs on China's export trade effects to our country, from four aspects analysis the influence on carbon tariffs which is product structure, growth, technology development and production cost; The fourth chapter comes up with the main contents and core problems of this research, the impact of carbon tariffs on China's export trade with quantitative analysis. First, enumerate the methods of qualitative analysis, compare its advantages and disadvantages respectively, Then take various factors into consideration; Finally, use gravity model to carry out quantitative analysis of carbon tariffs on China's export trade effects to our country. This essay adopts an substitute method. The author use RoHS (the Restriction of the use of certain hazardous substances in electrical and electronic equipment) and WEEE (Waste Electrical and Electronic Equipment), promulgated by Europe Union in 2003, to substitute the impact of the carbon tariff for China's export trade. Because these two restriction ruled that from 2005, the countries, exports electrical and electronic equipment to European market, must pay money for the disposal when those goods are abandoned, which means they collect tariff of the imports again, the same with carbon tariff, so we can treat it as a substitution of carbon tariff. This essay choose automobile as sample by constructing the gravity model, using Eviews to analyze it, finally concluded that the EU on China's exports of mechanical and electrical products in China abandoned the car payments have negative effects, its export coefficient of negative. We can think that if carbon tariffs is really imposed, there will be negative effects on China's export trade. For example UK carbon tariffs is imposed for＄9.1 per ton, then China's high carbon products export to Britain's will reduce 0.45%. The fifth chapter is conclusion and suggestion.Although trade gravity academic application in the domestic and international is extensive, few scholars study carbon tariffs on China's export trade influence by the gravity model, this is the innovations of this essay.Firstly, the author analyzes on the impact of carbon tariff for the trade between our country and the principal trade partners and evaluates the potential of our foreign trade under the implementation of carbon tariff.Secondly, the author compares the different technical evaluation, analyzes the impact of the technical evaluation for the result and chooses the model of this research.Thirdly, the author analyzes on the result, and comes up with some advice of the development of our country's foreign trade in Low-carbon economy.