Study Of The Impact Of Environmental Policies On International Trade

With the rapid development of science and technology and the continuous increasing of economic globalization, international trade is developing very fast. However, on the other hand, because of unreasonable international economic order and growth style in history, there is a very strong pressure to both global economic growth and environment and resources, which lead to a series of global environmental problems. International society feels it is more and more important to protect environment. The ways environmental issues are paid more attention and take more and more important effects in trade system are mainly as follows: 1) With the attention to international environmental issues, there are many international environmental conventions that affect many aspects of international trade structure and scale; 2) There are many environmental provisions among the numerous international trade conventions, many non-economic factors affect international trade.Different economists have researched the relationship between environment and international trade in different ways. The main theories about this issue are comparative advantage transfer theory, non-tariff barrier theory, externality theory and sustainable development theory, etc. Although they have different comments about the mechanisms, ways and functions of the impact of environmental policies on international trade, their common conclusion is that environmental policies have affected international trade in some ways, hi the view of environmental protection and sustainable development, environmental policies definitely have a positive function, but they still have some negative effects to production cost and international competitive. Present study on this topic still lag behind practical need and there are still some inadequacies, e.g., we do not have a clear answer about die environmental policy impact direction and strength. In order to eliminate them, following works should be done: 1) Introducing environmental parameters into comparative advantage model, and 2) Introducing time factors and considering short term effects and long term effects respectively, so as to explain the internal mechanism and function manner of environmental policy impact on international trade.International trade should comply with comparative advantage theory not only in theory but also in practice. The Ricardian comparative advantage theory is the basis of modern international trade development In this paper, environmental parameters are introduced into Ricardian comparative advantage theory, and considering short term and long term effects respectively, the internal mechanism how environmental policies affect international trade is proposed. From study, it is indicated that after a environmental policy promulgated, in short term, the comparative advantages of some products that are affected by environmental policies are reduced or disappeared, these productions are transferred into other countries, hi long term, science and technology act a more and more important role in modem production of tradable products with the development of science and technology, production advantage of tradable products is always changed with factor productivity. When tradable product cycle becomes shorter, and non-price factor becomes more important, product quality improvement can compensate the disadvantage caused by price increasing. High-density research and development activities can increase comparative advantages of some kind of product, andeliminate or reduce environmental policy effects to comparative advantages, the lost comparative advantages can be regained. From this vies, environmental policies add new parameters to research, development and technological renovation activities of enterprises, thus affect their technological renovation directions and rates and then their producing technological level and international trade record,China has to limit to produce and consume substances that deplete the ozone layer after joining Vienna Convention for the Protection of Ozone L...