US President Donald Trump on Wednesday outlined his tariff strategy targetting the BRICS bloc, asserting that the group was “against the dollar” and that some
member nations were already “dropping out.” Trump stated, “I told anyone who wants to be part of BRICS -- that’s fine -- but we’ll be imposing tariffs on your country.” “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 called on BRICS nations to uphold the multilateral trading system and respect international law -- a move widely viewed as a subtle rebuke to the protectionist policies championed by Trump’s MAGA-driven America. The appeal could spark fresh tensions with a US President who has grown increasingly vocal in his criticism of the non-Western economic bloc. Trump has long criticised BRICS, depicting it as a threat to US economic supremacy. The alliance, which originally comprised Brazil, Russia, India and China, has since expanded to include ten full members: Brazil, Russia, India, China, South Africa, Egypt, Ethiopia, Iran, the UAE and Indonesia. An additional ten countries hold partner-state status, including Belarus, Bolivia and Malaysia, while another ten nations, such as Pakistan and Sri Lanka, have formally applied for membership. The rapid expansion of BRICS has unsettled Washington. Trump has portrayed the bloc as a direct threat to the dollar’s global reserve status, claiming it was “set up to hurt us” and intended to “undermine our dollar.”
