By employing tariffs and sanctions alike, Washington is seeking to “strangle the competition” with other nations and to place the global free market economy under “very firm control,” Russian Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev said on Monday in Shanghai, during a three-day working trip to China. He was commenting on the decision of US President Donald Trump to enact sanctions against Russia and Iran, and to slap tariffs on EU and Chinese goods. Such protectionist policies will in the end “hurt the US economy as well,” Medvedev said.