The Impact Of Carbon Tariffs On Chinese Agircultural Products

The General Assembly of the United Nations Climate Change Conference inCopenhagen and the Cancun Climate Change Conference has shifted the internationalcommunity towards a consensus on the development of a low-carbon global economy.Some European countries, such as Sweden, Denmark, and Italy, have attempted toimpose a carbon tax within their own countries. At the same time, some developingcountries, such as South Africa, put moved to collect carbon emission tax on industryproduction. On June26,2009, the US congress approved the “Clean Energy SecurityAct.” According to the Act, beginning in2020, the US will impose high carbon tariffson emissions-intensive imported products that do not meet the standards of US carbonemissions. Therefore, it is a realistic significance to study the impact of carbon tax onthe export trade of China.This thesis, taking agricultural products as the research object, researches on theimpact of carbon tariff’s on agricultural products by using the GTAP model. It isdivided into five parts: The first part mainly introduces the research background andsignificance, the structure, the theory and properties of carbon tariff. The second partanalyzes the situation of the agricultural export trade, calculates the quantity ofembodied carbon emission and main export area based on the input-output table of2007and IPCC energy carbon emission coefficient of2006.The third part theoreticallyanalyzes how the carbon tariff influences on Chinese agricultural products trade. As akey of the paper, the fourth part makes an empirical analysis of impact of carbon tariff’son China’s agricultural products, from the aspects of its exports, production and salesprice, trade environment, GDP and benefit level by using the sixth version database ofGTAP model and the RunGTAP software, wherein the twenty-seven EU countries’carbon tariff collection on Chinese exported agricultural products is to be used as thehypothesis in order to test the front qualitative analysis. The fifth part mainly putforward to some related suggestions according to the above analysis.This thesis concludes that there is a positive correlation between the export tradeand export of agricultural products of the embodied carbon emissions. It discusses theeffects of carbon tariffs on agricultural trade: reduction of export volume, increase inexport prices, decline in domestic output, deterioration of trade conditions, and reducedsocial welfare. The findings are based on the results of an empirical test using theGlobal Trade Analysis Project GTAP model and a RunGTAP software simulation analysis of the effects of carbon tariffs on China’s agricultural product exports. Basedon the simulation results of GTAP model, the author proposed countermeasures andsuggestions for China’s exports of agricultural products under the constraint of carbontariff from the national level and enterprise level. From the aspect of the government,Chinese government should improve its low carbon agriculture policy, develop greenagriculture, establish the low carbon agricultural development mode, and activelyparticipate in the international environmental negotiations. From the perspective ofagricultural enterprises, they should strengthen the carbon emission reductionconsciousness, increase agricultural science and technology innovation, expand theemerging export market, and implement diversified market strategy.