Trump reposted late November’s threat to impose 100% tariffs on BRICS countries if they go through with their alleged plans to create a new currency or support an existing one to replace the dollar, which was analyzed here at the time. It was assessed that his threat was based upon false premises since such plans were only floated around by the group and never seriously advanced. Even Putin downplayed them as was proven in the aforesaid analysis citing speeches from the official Kremlin website.
The reality is that BRICS hasn’t achieved anything tangible in the decade since it agreed to create the New Development Bank in 2014, with even last October’s Kazan Summit falling flat despite the unprecedented hype that preceded it as explained in detail here back then. Shortly after Trump’s initial threat, Indian External Affairs Minister Dr. Subrahmanyam Jaishankar clarified that his country has no de-dollarization plans, which was reaffirmed after his latest threat and also echoed by Russia too.
In any case, it’s worthwhile wondering why Trump would repost the exact same threat two months later, which can be answered by remembering that this immediately preceded his imposition of 25% tariffs on Canada and Mexico and 10% on China on the pretext that they won’t help him stop the fentanyl scourge. It might therefore very well be that he’s planning to expand the anti-Chinese dimension of these tariffs on the pretext that Beijing is trying to internationalize the yuan via BRICS as a competitor to the dollar.
As for the group’s other countries, they could be sanctioned on a case-by-case basis on the pretext that they’re either working with China to this end or on the related one that they’re trying to create a new currency within BRICS, with such threats giving him powerful negotiating leverage over them. Seeing as how the BRICS claim is provably false as was earlier shown, the first scenario about implementing tariffs on the pretext of helping China internationalize the yuan is more likely, thus excluding India at least.
To be sure, he might still impose other forms of pressure upon it when negotiating trade-related issues, but there’s no credible basis for alleging that India is conspiring with its Chinese rival to internationalize the yuan amidst their unresolved border dispute that’s only recently thawed. The other countries don’t have any such tensions with China and concomitant obstacles to internationalizing its currency at the dollar’s expense so it’s possible that they might soon be threatened with tariffs on this pretext.
In that case, some of the less economically strong and politically sovereign countries might capitulate to whatever the US demands of them, which could take the form of gradually rebalancing their trade and investment away from China and back towards the US. In practice, this could lead to renegotiated trade and investment deals alongside other means of bringing this about, including underhanded ones that could see these BRICS countries informally creating an unfriendly environment for Chinese businesses.
Nobody should expect that this might happen right away or lead to a rupture in their relations with China, let alone them withdrawing from BRICS, but just that it’s the most logical goal that Trump would be aiming for if he threatens to tariff them on the de-dollarization pretext that he just reposted about. In other words, a full-fledged economic pressure campaign by the US against the BRICS countries might be imminent, one which many of them might prefer to submit to than risk crippling tariffs.
