US President Donald Trump on Wednesday detailed his tariff strategy against Brics, claiming the bloc was “against the dollar” and saying countries were “dropping out.”“I told anybody who wants to be in Brics, that’s fine, but we’re going to put tariffs on your nation,” Trump said. “Everybody dropped out. They’re all dropping out of Brics. Brics was an attack on the dollar and I said, you want to play that game, I’m going to put tariffs on all of your products coming into the US. They said, like I said, we’re dropping out of Brics…They don’t even talk about it anymore.”
Just days earlier, India had urged Brics nations to uphold the multilateral trading system and adhere to international law – a move seen as a pushback against the protectionist measures promoted by Trump’s MAGA-driven America. The appeal risks fresh friction with a US President increasingly vocal in his hostility towards the non-Western economic grouping.
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Trump has repeatedly attacked Brics in the past, portraying it as a challenge to US economic dominance. The grouping, originally formed by Brazil, Russia, India, and China, has now expanded to ten full members: Brazil, Russia, India, China, South Africa, Egypt, Ethiopia, Iran, UAE, and Indonesia. Ten others are partner states — including Belarus, Bolivia, and Malaysia — while another ten, such as Pakistan and Sri Lanka, have applied for membership.The rapid expansion of Brics has rattled Washington. Trump has cast it as a direct threat to the dollar’s global reserve status, insisting the bloc was “set up to hurt us” and to “degenerate our dollar.”Even as New Delhi clarified that it does not support de-dollarisation, Trump issued a fresh warning — threatening a 100 percent tariff on Brics nations if they pursued that path.
