My Take | The behaviour of Donald Trump is making Brics great again
US president may think he is driving a wedge between member nations but, in fact, he is forcing them together through his economic coercion
Western critics used to claim Brics had no ideological coherence or sense of mission, and was little better than a talking shop. But that grouping of nations is becoming more cohesive and powerful, not least because of Western pressure.
Donald Trump, for one, has been driving them ever closer and giving them a common purpose – to resist Washington’s economic coercion by developing their own trade and financial systems.
Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa, among other Brics partnering states, now have every reason to stick together, lest Trump finishes them off one by one with his universal tariffs, or even a shooting war.
Thanks to the US president, Brazilians are today more united in their anti-American nationalism than ever before. Trump has imposed punishing 50 per cent tariffs and sanctioned a senior Brazilian judge who presides over the trial of far-right former president Jair Bolsonaro, whom he considers a friend and ally.
Trump has admitted the high tariffs were imposed not because of trade, but to punish Brasilia for “politically persecuting a former president of Brazil” and for “contributing to the deliberate breakdown in the rule of law”.
But unlike Canada and Mexico, Brazil is far less dependent on the US market, which accounts for only 12 per cent of its exports. By contrast, 28 per cent of Brazilian exports go to China.
Bolsonaro is on trial for plotting a coup in the wake of his electoral defeat in October 2022, not unlike the coordinated Capitol insurrection on January 6, 2021. Washington’s charge about “the breakdown in the rule of law” seems doubly ironic as the rule of law is actually working fine in Brazil, but not so much in the US; Trump was never held legally liable for January 6.