| The World Trade Organization (WTO) began to operate formally in the year 1995:after that the international trade has been developing in a more normative and open direction. With the operation of the World Trade Organization, countries tariffs by continuously cut, and restrictions on non-tariff measures are more stringent. But developed countries carried out a series of non-tariff barriers measures in order to protect their own international trade, among which the green trade barriers is one of the main forms of the existing trade barriers. It is mainly directed against the environment and human health, agriculture as designed with the environment and human health most close relations by the industry, the influence of green trade barriers is especially remarkable.On December 11,2001, China formally joined the World Trade Organization as the 143rd member of WTO. Since joining, China's export of agricultural products suffered not only from quota and tariff of developed countries but also from their restrictions on the so-called Green Environmental Protection Requirements and more restrictions faced market access difficulties. Therefore, China's export of agricultural products often encounters the market access difficulties. To make matters worse, the international situation has undergone major changes in recent years. The U.S. subprime mortgage crisis has evolved into a global financial crisis. The United States, Japan, Korea, EU and other countries are particularly affected by the financial crisis because of the serious global economic recession. There is a serious decline in external demand for agricultural products in China. Although the crisis has bottomed out now, in order to restore their economies, they played the protectionist card. Therefore, the green trade barriers become a means of protection crazily adopted by these countries.China is the largest developing country, and also a large agricultural country with 900 million farmers of the total population. Green trade barriers on exports of agricultural products has a more extensive and profound impact in China than in other countries. Shandong Province is a province of agricultural exports. Since 1999, agricultural products in Shandong Province has been consecutively ranking first for 11 years. In front of the green barriers, Shandong becomes one of the most affected provinces, and its products suffered enormous damage in international market. How to deal with the green trade barriers has become an important issue for government departments and enterprises to study and solve. This article first reviewed the green trade barriers, and then introduced the overview of Shandong agricultural exports, including the empirical analysis for Shandong agricultural output and exports. It also introduced the green trade barriers of the major exporting countries, and analyzed the reasons why Shandong province has encountered so many green barriers. At the end, the author proposed agricultural industrialization, standardization, branding and other measures from the macro (government) and micro (enterprises) aspects based on the analysis. It is worth mentioning that this article gives a more detailed description on the environmental measures in the countries ranking top in the export scale with Shandong, which has a very important reference value for the agricultural enterprises in our province. This is a highlight in this article. If the Shandong provincial government and enterprises would deal with the green trade barriers correctly and face the challenges positively, Shandong province can be more active instead of being passive to improve the competitiveness of agricultural exports and achieve sustainable agricultural development. |
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