“The US is not solving any issue on the China-US trade frictions by simply imposing extra tariffs on Chinese products,” Timur Shaimergenov, a member of the Public Council under the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Republic of Kazakhstan said in a recent interview with the People’s Daily.

China and US are important trade partners for each other with intertwined economic interests, he pointed out. Chinese commodities have long become a part of the daily life for American citizens, and the high tariffs would place direct impact on ordinary US consumers, he said, adding that the tariff hike will also harm the interests of related retailers and downstream industries in the US.

“China, which has been forced to take counteractions, has the ability to divert its products from the US to other markets, but it will be very difficult for US enterprises to come back to China once they lose the market,” Shaimergenov noted.

In recent years, China has further facilitated the interconnectivity with Belt and Road regions including the European Union and the Middle East thanks to the implementation of the Belt and Road Initiative, releasing bigger potential for economic and trade cooperation, he said.

“It is because of the Initiative that Central Asia has once again become the transportation hub for Eurasia, and Kazakhstan has embraced a major opportunity for developing industrial and non-energy sectors,” Shaimergenov remarked.

He told People’s Daily that China enjoys a high reputation from the international community by always adhering to win-win cooperation and common development, as well as its efforts to promote economic globalization. On the contrary, the US government is going against the trend of the times by adopting the “America first” strategy and trade protectionism.

“The easy approaches of the US to threaten China on trade issues are unpractical,” he commented.

Shaimergenov believes that bilateral and multilateral economic and trade cooperation is a market practice, and the current trade pattern is a natural result of the choice made by market and consumers. Any practice to forcibly change the global economic structure is wrong, he said.

“The China-US trade friction is a complicated and systematic issue, which should not be addressed through simply increasing tariffs,” he said, adding that the US should expand exports, ease trade restrictions, and improve trade facilitation rather than the adopting a tariff boost.

He pointed out that China and the US are vital economies, and their development to a large extent determines the development of global economy. “The increasingly confident China has been acting rationally enough in the trade frictions, and I hope the US can also see the larger picture and get back to the right track to make positive efforts to safeguard global economic interests,” Shaimergenov said.