United States President Donald Trump has made no secret of his hostility towards BRICS. Last year, he threatened an additional 10 percent tariff on any country aligning itself with what he called the bloc’s “anti-American policies”. Since then, his administration has continued to wield tariffs aggressively against trading partners, including BRICS members such as Brazil, India and China.
The message appears straightforward: Countries that challenge US economic power should expect to pay a price. But coercion has consequences. And as BRICS leaders meet in New Delhi today, Trump may be strengthening the very incentives that made the bloc attractive in the first place.
The more Washington demonstrates its willingness to use access to its markets, its financial system and the dollar as instruments of political leverage, the more reason other countries have to reduce their exposure to them. This does not mean BRICS is becoming an anti-US alliance. The bloc’s 11 members – Brazil, China, Egypt, Ethiopia, India, Indonesia, Iran, Russia, Saudi Arabia, South Africa and the United Arab Emirates – have enormous political and economic differences.
Together, they account for nearly half the world’s population and about 40 percent of global gross domestic product, but they do not share a common ideology, security policy or even geopolitical orientation. Recent events have made those divisions impossible to ignore. Iran, Saudi Arabia and the UAE find themselves on opposite sides of a growing regional conflict.
In May, Iranian and Emirati representatives clashed during a foreign ministers’ meeting in New Delhi. India and China have had a heated border dispute that led to deadly skirmishes in 2020-2021; only in the past two years have their relations gradually stabilised. So Trump is not producing a united geopolitical front against Washington.
He may, however, be giving countries with otherwise divergent interests a common reason to cooperate economically: Protection against vulnerability to US power. For countries outside the Western core, dependence on US-centred economic infrastructure carries risks. The dollar’s centrality gives the US enormous structural advantages.
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