MOSCOW, June 17. /TASS/. The West is trying to maintain the status quo on the global stage, resisting the growing influence of developing countries, Russian Deputy Prime Minister Alexander Novak said in an interview with the Vedomosti newspaper.
"The world’s economic center has been shifting from the West to the East since the beginning of the 2000s. Developing countries, notably China, are gaining a much greater role in the global economy. Those who are accustomed to dictating their conditions are surely not satisfied with such a situation. And we see more and more often Western countries actively attempting to keep the status quo on the global stage and preserve their leadership by resisting the growing influence of developing states on the global economy," he said.
This is why the strengthening of protectionism in the national economy and the reassessment of existing globalization results are coming to the fore, Novak added. "The virtual collapse of multisided WTO mechanisms, imposing unilateral tariff and non-tariff restrictions on developing countries under the pretext of ‘threats to national interests’, and the introduction of various sanctions against competitors have become the main steps in this direction," he explained.
