G-2 and the climate crisis: How global exports to China and the U.S. drive carbon emissions, 2000–2022

In recent decades, China has risen to become the second-largest national economy and the world’s top national carbon emitter, while the United States (U.S.) has retained its status as the largest national economy and a top emitter among nations. The trade war between the two nations has heightened geopolitical and world-economic tensions, underscoring the need to examine its implications for the climate crisis. Although prior research identifies global trade expansion as a key driver of nations’ greenhouse gas emissions, the specific influence of exports to these two world-economic powerhouses on emissions remains greatly understudied. To help remedy this gap, we investigate how export flows to the U.S. and China have shaped carbon emissions from 2000 to 2022, using fixed effects models across 181 nations and territories. Focusing on both export volumes and export shares to the U.S. and China, we find that exports to China increase carbon emissions in both the short run and long run, highlighting China’s outsized carbon impacts on exporting nations. In contrast, exports to the U.S. do not consistently contribute to national carbon emissions.