Research On Border Carbon Adjustments Under WTO

After the《American Clean Energy and Security Act》was passed by the U.S. House of Representatives on June,2009, a new kind of international trade measure so-called "carbon tariff"became to be known and triggered great dispute in the international community. Now some experts views that the measure would violate the rules of WTO but do not provide sufficient and detailed arguments. According to this, the author tries to do some research on this sensitive topic. What's more, maybe this measure can give us some fairly useful suggestions and do some help to enhance our ability to address climate change. The paper is consist of four sections:In the first section, the author introduces the backgrounds of the measures and the legal concept of was defined. The author believes that compared to"carbon tariff', "Border Carbon Adjustments(BCAs)" could be a more reasonable definition of this controversial measures. In order to maintain their domestic enterprises'competitiveness on the international market and prevent "carbon leakage", countries which have already undertook the duty of cutting down CO2 emissions tries to make an excess burden on the imported products from the countries that haven't lowered their greenhouse gas emission. The key to this problem is, under the current international climate regime,BCAs actually can be thought of a kind of measure took by developed countries, but aiming at developing countries.SectionⅡanalyses the backgrounds of BCAs. Of course, competitiveness worries could be a important renson, but in essence the author believes that, BCAs is a sort of international trade tool invented by developed countries to try to change the emission-cutting duties regime, and force developing countries to do "equivalent" emission-reduction obligations.SectionⅢis the core of this paper, it wants to compare the BCAs to the WTO rules. From the author's view of point, BCAs are likely to violate the principles of MFN, national treatment, tariff reduction and elimination of quantitative restrictions of WTO rules. What's worse, it may not succeed in quoting the general exceptional item, so it's a kind of illegal international trade measure.But the question is far from over. The author also discusses about the actions that we should take because "low-carbon economy" has become an irreversible trend of development in the world. We should actively participate in the international climate negotiations, accelerate the transformation of economic growth and improve our legal system to address climate change. Only in this way can we take responsible to the problem of climate change and successfully gain the opportunity to develop our social economy continuously.