MOSCOW, December 9. /TASS/. Global trade system in the framework of the World Trade Organization (WTO) should be preserved, but Washington’s steps hinder it, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said in an interview with Kazakhstan’s Khabar news agency.

"We want this global trade system to remain open and to be preserved. Certainly, this is not encouraged by the steps of Washington, which has already reshaped the North American Free Trade Zone and ditched the Trans-Pacific Partnership. What will replace this, it’s very difficult to say," Lavrov noted.

Russia’s top diplomat stressed that in case of a trade standoff between the US and China Russia will act taking into account its own interests, noting that no one benefits from trade wars. "We take care about economic interests of Russia and our partners in the integration association of the Eurasian Economic Union," he said.

China remains Russia’s key trade partner, with bilateral trade in 2018 estimated at nearly $100 bln. "We have partners on the Eurasian space, in the European part of our continent and in the Eurasian Economic Union. Such partner as Iran is also a subject to tough US sanctions," Lavrov said. "However, we want to consider all these problems not through siding with anyone in the trade war, but through using legitimate legal procedures of the WTO, and we are already doing this, while China and the European Union are acting in the same way in regard to the US."

Lavrov noted that the US authorities and President Donald Trump are sure that they can solve all issues alone, without taking care about any multilateral structures and seeking to meet the US earlier commitments, which this administration now deems at outdated. "However, I’m sure that in the end the US administration will understand the need to act in concert and honor the rules, which we have established for many decades for the WTO," Lavrov said.