International Green Trade Barrier 国际贸易壁垒分析(英文版)

International Green Trade Barrier

(一)Introduction

Green Trade Barrier, simply Green Barrier or Environment Barrier, comes into being at the late 1980s and begins to develop in every country all over the world in the 90s. It concludes those measures either directly or indirectly taken to restrict or even ban on import trade by the importing country during the international trade activities in order to protect its environment, natural resources and human beings’ health. It is a new type of non-tariff barriers which is actually used by developed countries as a tool of restricting developing countries’ importing and exporting trade in the name of environmental protection under the condition of the fierce conflict between environment and trade. For example, American refused to import the petrol of Venezuela because the Pb content in it has been beyond the standard of this country; European countries ban imports on the refrigerators which content Freon; The USDA bans imports on the beef from countries that have had cases of mad cow disease.

Objectively speaking, there are two general kinds of Green Barrier, namely Kind Green Barrier and Vicious Green Barrier, which is classified according to its own motives. If the importing countries establish and implement their policies, law and technical standards to restrict the import with the purpose of protecting ecology, people’s health and developing sustainably, it is a Kind Green Barrier. However, the Vicious Green Barrier is actually a way of trade protectionism, which is aimed at making use of the domestic technical advantages to stop developing countries from entering its home market. Such kind of green barrier should be resisted and prevented. They have different or even opposite influence on the international trade. The former can keep our society developing in a sustainable and harmonious order, whereas the latter fails to do it like that. Therefore, we should keep this problem in prospective.

(二) Reasons of the Rise

i.Green Trade Barrier is more elusive and safer than other non-tariff

barriers.

Compared with import quotas, import license, import ban and many other non-tariff barriers, the Green Trade Barrier has fewer problems in the unreasonable distribution and varieties of discriminations hence it is much easier to avoid trade friction. Besides, the modern inspection standards based on the scientific technology are so stringent and complicated that it is difficult for the export countries to deal with and adjust to.

ii.The deterioration of the worldwide environment has changed our human value.

With the fast growth of the Industrialization and the world economy, the pollution and disruption of environment and natural recourses have become more and more serious, such as