Key Lab of Urban Environment and Health, Institute of Urban Environment, Chinese Academy of Sciences, 1799 Jimei Road, Xiamen, Fujian 361021, China.
University of Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing 100049, China.
Environ Sci Technol. 2021 May 18;55(10):7102-7112. doi: 10.1021/acs.est.0c08836. Epub 2021 Apr 29.
Disputes around trade inequality have been growing over the last 2 decades, with different countries claiming inequality in different terms including monetary deficits, resource appropriation and degradation, and environmental emission transfer. Despite prior input-output-based studies analyzing multidimensional trade consequences at the sector level, there is a lack of bottom-up studies that uncover the complexity of trade imbalances at the product level. This paper quantifies four types of flows, monetary, resource, embodied energy use, and embodied greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, resulting from aluminum trade for the four economies with the highest aluminum trade, that is, the United States, China, Japan, and Australia. Results show that the United States has a negative balance in monetary flows but a positive balance in resource flows, embodied energy use, and GHG emissions. China has a positive balance in monetary and resource flows but a negative balance in embodied energy use and GHG emissions. Japan has a positive balance in all flows, while Australia has a negative balance in all flows. These heterogeneous gains and losses along the global leaders of aluminum trade arise largely from their different trade structures and the heterogeneities of price, energy use, and GHG emission intensities of aluminum products; for example, Japan mainly imports unwrought aluminum, and its quantity is 3 times that of the exported semis and finished aluminum-containing products that have similar energy and GHG emission intensities but 20 times higher prices, while Australia mainly exports bauxite and alumina that have the lowest prices, the quantity of which is 25 times that of imported semis and finished products. This study suggests that resource-related trade inequalities are not uniform across economic and environmental impacts and that trade policies must be carefully considered from various dimensions.
过去 20 年来，贸易不平等问题一直存在争议，不同国家以不同的方式声称存在不平等，包括货币赤字、资源占有和退化以及环境排放转移。尽管之前有基于投入产出的研究在部门层面分析了多维贸易的后果，但缺乏从底层揭示产品层面贸易失衡复杂性的研究。本文量化了四种流动，即货币流动、资源流动、体现能源使用和体现温室气体（GHG）排放，这些流动是由四个铝贸易量最大的经济体（美国、中国、日本和澳大利亚）的铝贸易产生的。结果表明，美国在货币流动方面存在负平衡，但在资源流动、体现能源使用和 GHG 排放方面存在正平衡。中国在货币和资源流动方面存在正平衡，但在体现能源使用和 GHG 排放方面存在负平衡。日本在所有流动方面都存在正平衡，而澳大利亚在所有流动方面都存在负平衡。这些沿着全球铝贸易领导者的不均匀收益和损失主要来自于它们不同的贸易结构以及铝产品价格、能源使用和 GHG 排放强度的异质性；例如，日本主要进口未锻造铝，其数量是出口半成品和含铝成品的 3 倍，这些成品的能源和 GHG 排放强度相似，但价格高 20 倍，而澳大利亚主要出口价格最低的铝土矿和氧化铝，其数量是进口半成品和成品的 25 倍。本研究表明，资源相关的贸易不平等在经济和环境影响方面并不一致，贸易政策必须从多个维度进行仔细考虑。
