Trump may be BRICS’s best recruitment agent
President Donald Trump has repeatedly used tariffs and the threat of economic penalties against countries he views as opposing US interests, actions that may unintentionally encourage members of the expanding BRICS group to reduce their reliance on US-dominated financial infrastructure. BRICS’s 11 members remain politically diverse and are not forming a single anti-US bloc, but they are increasingly experimenting with payment systems, local-currency trade and regional financial links to limit exposure to US leverage.
Why It Matters
If countries cut dependence on the dollar and Western-controlled payment networks, Washington’s ability to use market access, sanctions and the dollar as instruments of coercion could be weakened — a dynamic made more urgent by the US’s recent tariffs and sanctions that have affected BRICS members. That shift would change how governments and businesses manage cross-border trade and finance even without displacing the dollar as the dominant reserve currency.
Key Facts
- Trump tariff threat: Last year he threatened an additional 10% tariff on any country aligning with what he called BRICS’s 'anti-American policies'.
- Tariffs used against BRICS members: The administration has applied tariffs aggressively against trading partners, including Brazil, India and China.
- BRICS membership: The bloc now has 11 members: Brazil, China, Egypt, Ethiopia, India, Indonesia, Iran, Russia, Saudi Arabia, South Africa and the United Arab Emirates.
- Population and GDP share: BRICS members together account for nearly half the world’s population and about 40% of global GDP.
- IMF reserve-currency data: In Q1 2026 the dollar made up 57.1% of global foreign-exchange reserves; the Chinese renminbi was 2%.
President Trump’s recent trade posture — including public threats of extra tariffs and a broader pattern of using trade measures against partners such as Brazil, India and China — has been framed by Washington as punishing countries that challenge US economic dominance. But those same tactics can produce an opposite policy effect: they increase the incentives for countries to seek ways to lessen their vulnerability to US-centered financial and trade systems.
BRICS’s expanded membership spans a wide spectrum of political positions and regional interests, so it is not coalescing into a unified geopolitical bloc aimed at Washington. The 11 members include states with significant disputes among themselves, and they do not share a single ideology or security strategy. Nevertheless, the shared concern about dependence on US-controlled market access, the dollar and financial networks gives them a practical reason to deepen economic cooperation focused on resilience.
Concrete steps to lower that dependence are already underway. South Africa has linked into China’s Cross-Border Interbank Payment System to settle transactions in renminbi. Brazil and China are increasingly invoicing bilateral trade in their domestic currencies; India and the UAE have conducted settlements in rupees and dirhams; and China and Russia have shifted a large portion of their bilateral trade into national currencies. BRICS leaders have also pushed continued work on a cross-border payments initiative, and Reserve Bank of India Governor Sanjay Malhotra confirmed discussions about linking members’ fast-payment systems and possibly their central bank digital currencies.
Institutional changes mirror these technical experiments. The New Development Bank — created by the original BRICS members as an alternative source of development finance — explicitly aims to increase lending in members’ own currencies, targeting 30% of financing in local currency now and considering a rise to 40–50% for the 2027–2031 cycle. While none of these steps amount to replacing the dollar or building a fully separate global financial system, they create viable options for governments and firms to transact without routing through US-dominated infrastructure. Recent US measures, such as a 25% tariff on a range of Brazilian products in July and scrutiny of Brazil’s Pix payments system, along with sanctions that pushed Russia and Iran toward alternatives, have added urgency to this gradual diversification. The result is an incremental but meaningful expansion of payment and financing pathways that reduce, though do not eliminate, exposure to US economic leverage.
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