Carbon tariffs to be next barrier for textile exports
29 Jul '10
2 min read
Peterson Institute recently released a research report, saying that once carbon tariffs are implemented, China's manufacturing exports will decline by one-fifth and exports of low-income countries will be down by 8 percent.
The European Union, the United States and France have put carbon tariff system on their agendas. China's textiles, food, tires and other industries have received "alerts" on carbon tariffs.
Carbon emissions have already turned from an environmental issue into an economic issue for China's export sectors. When Chinese companies frequently encounter trade barriers like anti-dumping and safeguard measures, another barrier does not seem far away.
In June 2009, the U.S. House of Representatives passed the "2009 Clean Energy Security Act", which proposed to impose carbon tariffs in 2020. In November, the Government of France proposed to impose carbon tariffs on imports on January 1, 2010 on developing countries whose environmental protection legislation is less strict than the EU.
Although carbon tariffs of the two countries are still at "drawing board" stage, their intention is obviously against developing countries, which have made China, India and other countries feel the chill of the announcements.
Relevant research conducted by Financial Research Institute of Chinese Academy of Social Sciences shows that the tariffs will be levied in the range of US $30-60 / ton of carbon, if they will implement carbon tariffs around 2020.
Moreover, with the calculation based on US $60 per ton of carbon, the carbon tariffs are already close to or more than anti-dumping duties faced by some Chinese exports.
The study says that among 15 industrial production sectors, the five production industries, which will be most seriously affected by carbon tariffs, are textiles and apparels, shoes, feather products, electrical machinery communication electronics equipment.
It has been calculated that, under the impact of $30 carbon tariff rate, production of textile industry will decrease by 1.60 percent and under that of $60 tariff rate the production of textile industry will suffer by 3.18 percent.
marketing@alchempro.com
