Brics nations hit back at ‘emperor’ Donald Trump over tariff threats

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Leaders at the Brics summit of developing nations have lashed out at US President Donald Trump’s latest threat of an extra tariff on nations aligning with the bloc while vowing to double down on efforts to move away from the US dollar.

The 11-nation group, which includes China, Russia and Iran, had already criticised Washington’s unilateral tariffs and attacks on Iran in a final statement from its Rio de Janeiro meeting, without mentioning the US by name. However, a social media post by Trump on Sunday night threatening a 10 per cent extra tariff on pro-Brics countries raised tempers.

Host President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva of Brazil said it was “very mistaken and very irresponsible” of Trump to “threaten other [countries] on social media”.

“The world has changed. We don’t want an emperor. We are sovereign countries,” he told a news conference on Monday.

The leftwinger added that there was “no going back” on reducing dependence on the US currency — another Brics ambition — and that it would happen step by step “until it is consolidated”.

“The world needs to find a way so that our trade relationship does not need to go through the dollar,” Lula told reporters. “Nobody has determined that the dollar is the currency standard.”

He did not give details, but the central banks of Brics countries have been running a project to examine different possible international payment systems.

South Africa’s President Cyril Ramaphosa turned on those “seeking to have vengeance against those doing good in the world”.

“It is really disappointing that, when there is such a very positive collective manifestation, such as Brics, there should be others who see it in a negative light and want to punish those who participate,” he told the public broadcaster SABC. 

Russia’s foreign minister Sergei Lavrov, standing in for President Vladimir Putin, told reporters that Trump’s tariff threat showed that the globalisation model once promoted by Washington no longer worked. He added that the US had “flagrantly abused” the dollar’s position in the global financial system.

Western nations have questioned the relevance and coherence of the Brics, which brings together autocracies such as China and Russia with democracies such as Brazil and India. However, the long list of developing nations attending the Rio summit as associate members or observers testified to its growing clout in the global south.

“The Brics countries are playing an increasingly important role,” Bolivia’s hard-left President Luis Arce told the Russian broadcaster RT on the sidelines of the summit. “There is a clear struggle between the old stagnant bloc of the US and Europe on one side and the emerging bloc of Brics countries on the other.” 

While Brics nations disagree on some important issues, they are united on the need to reform global governance. The leaders’ statement called for a comprehensive overhaul of the UN, the IMF and World Bank, so that they might reflect the realities of the 21st century rather than the postwar era.

Russia and Iran both scored diplomatic victories, with Moscow securing wording from the leaders condemning “in the strongest terms the attacks against bridges and railway infrastructure deliberately targeting civilians” in Russia over the past weeks by Ukraine. No mention was made of Russian attacks on Ukraine. 

Iran, which joined the Brics last year, extracted condemnation from the bloc of the military strikes it had endured and “serious concern” over “deliberate attacks on peaceful nuclear facilities”, though the statement did not mention the US or Israel by name.

Marcos Troyjo, a former head of the Brics development bank and a critic of the group’s direction, said the bloc was “becoming lost to third world-ism”. He said it had lost its original purpose as an elite group of emerging market titans when it was founded by Brazil, Russia, India and China.

Referring to the bloc’s 31-page final statement covering everything from outer space to cultural imperialism and artificial intelligence, he joked: “It’s become like the Olympics. Every sport has to be represented.”