BRICS Seeks to Fill Void Left by G-20 Amid Trump’s Trade War
Major emerging market nations are striving to turn the BRICS group into a global forum capable of addressing the economic and political chaos unleashed by Donald Trump’s trade war.
Foreign ministers from the group named after its founding members — Brazil, Russia, India, China and, later, South Africa — are meeting Monday for the first time since Trump’s policies upended not only the world economy, but also traditional multilateral institutions such as the Group of 20, where consensus has become unattainable.
The upheaval has put BRICS in position to seize the sort of global influence its most prominent members have long sought, especially after it expanded its roster to include new nations — Egypt, Ethiopia, Indonesia, Iran and the United Arab Emirates — in recent years. The bloc now accounts for roughly half of the planet’s population and about 40% of global GDP.
During a two-day gathering in Rio de Janeiro, BRICS foreign ministers will devote a good amount of time to discussing how to react to Trump’s tariffs. China, facing 145% levies on most exports to the US, has indicated that it would like to leverage the gathering to push back against the US.
When asked about China’s expectation for the meeting at a briefing last week, a spokesperson for its finance ministry stopped short of naming the US but criticized those “wielding the big stick of tariffs, sabotaging international fairness and order, and heightening global security risks.” The spokesperson also called for “closer cooperation” and “joint effort” among the BRICS nations.
In a statement that will be published on Tuesday, BRICS foreign ministers will have strong words against unilateral measures on trade, without citing Trump or the US, according to two Brazilian government officials. While other countries would like the group to publicly rebuke Trump, that’s not the consensus view among its members, they said, requesting anonymity to talk about ongoing discussions.
The ability to find consensus among diverse points of view is precisely what BRICS will need to show in order to prove it can avoid the profound divisions that have eroded the effectiveness of institutions like the United Nations and the G-20.
Source : Bloomberg
