Study On The Impact Of EU Shipping Carbon Tax On China’s Seaborne Export Trade

With the continuous development of low-carbon economy,"carbon emission reduction" is also being vigorously promoted around the world, and becoming the focus of national conflict and gambling. As today’s "carbon emission reduction" game becoming increasingly fierce, EU focused on the shipping industry, proposed "shipping carbon tax" in June2012, planned to bring it into the EU Emissions Trading System. Currently, EU is the largest trading partner of China, china’s goods exported to Europe are mainly by sea. However, shipping industry is an energy-extensive consumption industry, at the background of depressing freight rates and rising costs of freight shipping market, EU shipping carbon tax would undoubtedly worsen the shipping industry. Therefore, how to formulate effective measures in advance to deal with the "shipping carbon tax" is related to the survival and development of the shipping industry.This paper concentrates on china’s shipping service exports, studies the effects of shipping carbon tax on china’s shipping service exports with the method of combining theoretical analysis with empirical analysis. First, it briefly analyzes the background of EU levying shipping carbon tax, then it researches the correlation of seaborne exports and seaborne carbon emissions. Co-integration regression result shows that carbon emissions transfer effect does exist in the growth of China’s export trade, which prompts some developed countries adopt trade protection by the name of environmental protection. Furthermore, this paper explores the transmission mechanism of shipping carbon tax on Chinese maritime export trade, with the use of partial equilibrium and general equilibrium models, it further analyzes the affects in depth. In order to measure the impact of shipping carbon tax quantitatively, this paper uses GTAP model to simulate the shocks of shipping carbon tax on China’s seaborne export trade price, trade volume, export destination and trading conditions in three different carbon tax rates. Finally, this paper presents several policy recommendations based on the government level and industry level.