The equipment manufacturing industry is not only a high-carbon industry, but also an important export industry in China. There is a close relationship between the export growth of China's equipment manufacturing industry and its carbon emissions. Based on this, this paper focuses on the equipment manufacturing industry, and establishes a Tapio model to combine the decoupling theory with export carbon emissions. Meanwhile, the relative advantages and disadvantages of the eight decoupling modes are evaluated and determined. Then, the decoupling elasticity index and the decoupling grade index are used to analyze the carbon emissions of China’s equipment manufacturing industry and its seven sub-sectors. The study implies that, from 2000 to 2018, the relationship between the overall carbon emissions of the equipment manufacturing industry and export growth was decoupling, and most of the sub-sectors were basically in the state of strong decoupling or weak decoupling. Therefore, the two decoupling optimization paths, which are increasing economic growth and decreasing energy consumption, are designed here to further improve the decoupling effect between the export growth of China's equipment manufacturing industry and its carbon emissions.