The Impact of Green Trade Barriers on Chinese Tea Exports: A Gravity Model Study

In recent years, with the intensification of the impact of reverse globalization, many countries have used green trade barriers to restrict China’s tea exports, so as to protect their own trade. This paper composes and analyzes the theories related to green trade barriers, explores the current situation of China’s tea exports and its influence by green trade barriers, selects the data of China’s tea exports to 30 countries between 2001 and 2021, and uses the trade gravity model for empirical analysis to explore the specific situation of China’s tea exports affected by green trade barriers. The gravity model is a tool used to measure the impact of trade barriers on international trade flows. It takes into account factors such as the countries’ gross domestic product, population size, distance between them and the trade policies they have in place. The results show that the existence of green trade barriers will lead to the decline of China’s tea exports. Finally, this paper put forward countermeasure suggestions to deal with green trade barriers from three levels: government, industry and tea enterprises.