Impact of Environmental Costs on Export Trade

Abstract

With the rapid growth of trade, the problem of environmental protection has become increasingly prominent. In the export trade, environmental costs are highly valued and become one of the enterprises important considerations for production and export in China. This paper analyzes the impact of environmental cost internalization and environmental regulation on export trade based on the related literature on environmental cost and export trade; using China’s one-time energy consumption data from 1997 to 2017 and 2001-2015 China’s major industrial pollution discharge data. It simply calculated the environmental costs based on energy consumption. The research results show that the impact of environmental costs on export trade is mainly reflected in the impact on trade advantages and export product structure. Whether it is internalization of environmental costs or reasonable environmental regulation, it has a positive effect on the protection of pollutants from export enterprises and the protection of environmental resources within a certain scope, but excessive environmental costs or environmental regulations will increase the production cost of export products, which is ultimately not conducive to the growth of export trade. The government needs to further strengthen the coordinated development of environment and export trade to build an environment-friendly trade power.