The Effects Of Carbon Tariff On Chinese Export Trade

"Carbon tariff" is one of the most concern in the field of nowadays’ international trade, its meaning is imposing emission fees on imported products based on carbon emissions during the production process. The abuse of "carbon tariff" can be traced back to the propose of the concept of carbon tariffs by EU, and the "border adjustment tax" bill which passed by the U.S. House of Representatives for imported products in the end of June2009, is deemed the specific implementation of "carbon tariff" in the legal form of time and conditions arrangements. As the representative of developing countries, China made it clear that the essence of the "carbon tariff" is by the name of environmental protection to implement in real terms of new trade protection and which in violation of WTO rules. Thus expand the sharp confrontation on carbon tariff between developed and developing countries. This article is to spread the research on carbon tariff issue in the above macro background.The research contents of this article mainly include four parts:The first part discusses the theoretical basis of carbon tariff, mainly to sort out the development of the theory context of trade protection, and to lay the foundation for further analysis of carbon tariff. The second part examines the basic problem of carbon tariff, including the meaning of carbon tariff, the proposal background and the collection basis. Focusing on the basic principles of the WTO such as the MFN clause, the "national treatment provisions" and "escape clause" analyze the rationality of carbon tariff one by one. The third part investigates the impact of carbon tariff on China’s export trade, and classifies products by energy consumption. To study the impact of carbon tariff on high energy-consuming industries such as agricultural products, textiles and clothing, and industrial products, as well as the impact on low-emission industries like service industry respectively.This article believes that a reasonable understanding of the carbon tariff cannot be generally identified as "conform" or "not conform" with the WTO principles, but use the specific rules&situations of the implementation of impose carbon tariff by different countries as a standard, to determine if it really plays an emission reduction role or just re-appearance for trade protection measures. Different types of energy-consuming industries has different Carbon tariff impacts on China’s export trade, from short-term point of view may be more impact, but it will promote the development of low energy-consuming industry or the environmental protection industry in the long run. This article put forward China’ counter measures to carbon-tariff from both internal and external levels. Internally should optimize the industrial structure, improve the export structure, strengthen independent R&D of low-carbon technologies, prohibit high-carbon industries transfer from developed countries to China, and establish the carbon tax system; externally should negate the rationality of carbon tariff within the existing WTO framework, participate in the multilateral negotiations actively, bear a reasonable carbon emission reduction task and change China’s role from passive to active.