The Study On The Effect Of Carbon Tariffs On China's Steel Export Trade

As global warming and fog haze intensifies,the environment problems have been the focus of the world increasingly,and also the carbon emission reduction is put on the agenda.The accountabilities and objectives of emission reduction in each country also become the focus of the world.The developed countries using their advantages on carbon emission reduction technology collect carbon tariffs to the developing countries in the name of protecting the environment.The carbon tariffs cloak themselves in environment protection and carbon emission reduction,but actually they are kind of green trade barrier.So far,many developing countries boycott the carbon tariffs,but the developed countries are the dominant power of international trade rules and have the technique advantage on the emission reduction and low carbon.Therefore,the carbon tariffs will be a means that the developed countries limit the developing countries and protect their own industries.Especially the steel industry in China once starts imposing carbon tariffs will have large impact on the exports of China's steel products,because the steel industry in China has features of high energy consumption and carbon emission.As a result,China shall save against a rainy day,take response measures at time.Firstly,from the point of two aspects: exporting features of steel products in China and carbon emission status of export steel,this thesis analyzes the mechanism of carbon tariffs' impact on steel export trade in China according to the economical effect theory of tariffs,and draws a conclusion from long-term and short-term.In the short term,after the implementation of carbon tariffs,the increasing of relevant low-carbon cost like low-carbon technique and carbon labels will raise the steel export product cost in China,which will discourage Chinese export trade and make the trade condition worse.But,in the long term,after the implementation of carbon tariffs,the steel industry in China will adopt vigorous measures.The steel export enterprises carry out technology innovation continuously which promotes the low-carbon technology formation and export trade of Chinese steel industry,improving the trade conditions.Secondly,the thesis makes a further study on the impact of carbon tariffs on the export of Chinese steel products according to the empirical analysis of carbon tariffs' cost andrequirement control mechanism.There are mainly two parts.The first part analyzes the fluctuation relationship between the carbon emission of the steel industry and 3 kinds of steel products like Chinese normal low value-added steel products,general low value-added steel products and high value-added steel products with VAR model and Johansen cointegration test.And then through the correlation coefficient analysis the impact of carbon tariffs on the export of Chinese steel.because the intensity of carbon emission directly affects imposing of carbon tariffs.Theoretically,there is a positive correlation between carbon tariffs and embodied carbon of products,so this thesis draws the conclusion indirectly through the analysis of the exporting steel carbon emission index to explain the carbon tariffs.Finally test the causal relationship with Granger causality test.The second part estimates the price flexibility of Chinese steel product exports to Europe,America and South Korea through linear regression model.Then computes in the increased costs of imposed carbon tariff using the price elastic coefficient,and gets the percentage drop of Chinese steel product exports to Europe,America and South Korea influenced by imposing carbon tariff.Thirdly,the thesis draws the following conclusions:(1)compared with the low value-added products,the high value-added products have obvious advantage on CDM.However,the low value-added products are still the main products in China in recent years,which are short of competitive advantage.So our country still needs improve the technological innovation of products and optimize the structure of product export.Through Granger causality test,the export of Chinese steel industry products is driven by high carbon emission.And the analysis of impulse response function shows that the developed countries impose carbon tariffs,the export of Chinese steel products will get very big impact.In short term,the exports decline sharply.But in long term,as technology progresses,this impact will decrease.This further proves the conclusion in Chapter 4.(2)If the developed countries impose the carbon tariffs,China will have the greatest reduction in the steel products exporting to the Europe Union,the next are America and South Korea.At the same time,the study shows that the impact of carbon tariffs on exports decreases with the increase of the carbon tariffs rate.But,during the year of 2001 and 2002,the impact of carbon tariffs on exports was on a downward trend,which might be caused by the continuous progress of production technology of the steel industry.Also,this thesis makes the following recommendations combined with the conclusions:from the the government perspective,to develop the low-carbon economic and to conserve the energy;to impose the carbon tariffs from the domestic enterprises and take the taxationinitiative;to establish the domestic carbon emission trading system and take advantage of CDM mechanism.From the enterprise perspective,the steel enterprises improve the study and innovation of low-carbon techniques,and optimize the structure of export products;to strengthen the development of emerging markets and achieve diversity of trade strategies;to actively carry out national environmental diplomatic establishments,and participate in the discussion and establishment of relevant carbon international rules.