The impact of the Sino-US trade conflict on global shipping carbon emissions

Abstract The trade conflict between China and the United States will have a complex and far-reaching impact on international trade patterns. The significant change in regional trade will not only impact the global transportation industry, but also have an important impact on international shipping carbon emissions. However, there are few studies that explore this issue. Based on the global multi-regional computable general equilibrium model, this study sets up three scenarios according to the development trend of the Sino–US trade conflict to measure the changes in global shipping carbon emissions under different trade conflict scenarios. The results show that, compared with the no trade conflict scenario, the tariff increase will reduce international trade by 0.329%–0.345%, but global international shipping carbon emissions will rebound by 0.25%–0.33%. The main reason for this result is that the trade conflict caused notable trade diversion. The direct trade between China and the United States became indirect trade that must be undertaken by “third countries”, which will increase the global freight mileage by 0.23%–0.34%. This paper finds that Sino–US trade conflict will not only hinder international trade volume, but also increase the transportation distance of international trade of goods, which will have a negative impact on the control of carbon emissions from international shipping. This study will help to clarify the impact of the Sino–US trade conflict on international maritime carbon emissions and provide a new perspective to comprehensively identify the economic and environmental impacts of trade conflict.