When Donald Trump returned to the White House in January 2025, few doubted he would double down on his trademark trade wars. What few predicted was that his sweeping tariffs would reshape the geopolitics of the world’s largest emerging economies, inadvertently breathing new life into a bloc that had long struggled to define itself: BRICS.
The group—originally Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa—has grown to include new members like Egypt, Iran, the United Arab Emirates, and Ethiopia. Long seen as more symbolic than strategic, BRICS had been plagued by internal divisions, diverging interests, and uneven development paths.
But Trump’s tariff barrage has changed the equation. By imposing some of the steepest penalties on BRICS members—far higher than those levied against traditional U.S. allies—the U.S. president has given the loose coalition something it rarely had before: a common grievance.
Trump’s tariff agenda is sweeping. China, his favorite target, faces the most punishing blow: up to 145% tariffs if no deal is reached. Brazil and India have each been hit with 50% duties, with India’s rate partly linked to its continued imports of discounted Russian oil. South Africa faces a 30% levy, while Egypt and other newer BRICS members are bracing for hikes of their own.
Trump justifies the measures as part of his pledge to punish “anti-American policies.” In stump speeches and tweets, he has branded BRICS as a “dead project” and dismissed its ambitions as little more than “China’s power grab.” Yet the numbers tell a different story.
Ajay Srivastava, a former Indian trade official, sees the tariffs as counterproductive. “These penalties don’t intimidate BRICS,” he told DW. “They create a shared incentive to reduce reliance on the U.S., even if agendas differ. In many ways, Washington is doing BRICS’ job for them.”
The most immediate response to Trump’s tariffs has been financial. BRICS nations, already wary of dollar dependency after years of U.S. sanctions on Russia and Iran, have accelerated moves to trade in local currencies. Central banks from Moscow to Pretoria have stepped up gold purchases, signaling intent to diversify reserves.
Russia and China lead the charge. Over 90% of bilateral trade between the two now takes place in yuan and rubles. Brazil and China are piloting yuan-based settlement systems. Even India—traditionally cautious about de-dollarization—is exploring rupee-based mechanisms with Russia and China.
“Trump says BRICS is dead,” noted Max Boot, a foreign policy analyst at the Council on Foreign Relations, in a recent Washington Post op-ed. “But by pushing allies and rivals alike into the same corner, he is committing strategic malpractice. He is diminishing U.S. power by perversely uniting countries that have little in common besides opposition to Washington’s heavy hand.”
These dynamics will be on display at the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) summit in Tianjin, northern China, where leaders from BRICS and beyond are gathering this week. President Xi Jinping will host Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Russian President Vladimir Putin—the first time the three will meet in this format since 2019.
The Kremlin has lobbied hard for trilateral talks among China, India, and Russia. The aim is not only to bolster BRICS’ credibility but also to bridge long-standing rifts, particularly between New Delhi and Beijing. “We want to strengthen the core of BRICS,” a Russian diplomat told Izvestia. “That means putting aside old disputes and showing unity in the face of U.S. pressure.”
For India, Trump’s tariffs are a game-changer. New Delhi has reopened direct flights with China, eased visa restrictions, and expanded trade discussions. During Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi’s recent visit to Delhi, Beijing pledged to boost rare earth supplies—minerals India desperately needs for its green energy transition and defense industry.
This outreach is striking given that India and China nearly went to war in 2020 over their disputed Himalayan border.
Skepticism remains. India distrusts Beijing’s strategic ambitions, not least its deep ties with Pakistan and its massive infrastructure projects across Asia. Shilan Shah, an economist at Capital Economics, argues that India is unlikely to fully embrace China. “Cheap Chinese imports are already undermining India’s efforts to build domestic industry,” Shah noted. “That creates political headaches for Modi, who must balance anti-China sentiment at home with pragmatic cooperation abroad.”
India’s reliance on the U.S. market complicates matters further. In 2024, India exported $77.5 billion to the U.S.—nearly three times its trade with China. Washington is also a crucial technology partner for India’s IT and defense sectors.
Still, Trump’s tariffs make cooperation with BRICS attractive, at least on specific issues like currency settlement, gold purchases, and energy supplies. As Srivastava put it, “BRICS isn’t about perfect unity—it’s about pragmatic deals that chip away at U.S. leverage.”
Brazil, meanwhile, is strengthening ties with China, which already absorbs 26% of Brazilian exports—twice the share of the U.S. In a recent phone call, President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva and Xi Jinping pledged to deepen agricultural trade and cooperate on renewable energy.
For Lula, BRICS offers a platform to assert independence from Washington without fully alienating it. Brazil continues to rely on U.S. financial markets, but Trump’s tariffs have pushed Brasília to hedge its bets.
South Africa, too, shows little inclination to bow to U.S. pressure. Sanusha Naidu, a senior researcher at the Institute for Global Dialogue, says Pretoria views BRICS as central to its long-term strategy. “South Africa isn’t going to reverse its BRICS commitments,” Naidu explained. “It sees value in global governance reform, academic exchanges, and building south-south cooperation. Tariffs won’t change that.”
Yet beneath the new momentum lie contradictions. BRICS has expanded to 10 members, but the larger it grows, the harder it is to reconcile diverging national interests. Saudi Arabia’s hesitation to formalize membership reflects these tensions.
Critics warn that BRICS is becoming more authoritarian as it expands. The original mission—creating a voice for emerging economies in global governance—now risks being overshadowed by an anti-Western posture driven by Moscow and Beijing.
Even so, trade within BRICS is rising. Research by Boston Consulting Group shows intra-BRICS trade growing faster than BRICS-G7 trade, though hydrocarbons dominate. Ironically, the bloc imposes more barriers on each other than Western countries do among themselves. Still, momentum is shifting.
Signs of deeper cooperation include rollback of anti-dumping duties, proposals for a BRICS-wide free trade agreement, and coordinated calls for reform of the World Trade Organization.
Mihaela Papa of Tufts University predicts greater political backing for intra-BRICS trade campaigns. “We can expect ‘Buy BRICS’ initiatives, new projects like the BRICS grain exchange, and expanded local currency settlement mechanisms,” she said.
A Russian-backed idea of a single BRICS currency remains shelved, but alternative systems are proliferating. As Srivastava puts it: “The dollar will remain dominant, but yuan, rupee, and ruble settlement systems will steadily chip away at its monopoly. Trump’s tariffs accelerate this process.”
The question looming over Tianjin is whether Trump has forged, however inadvertently, a tighter alliance among America’s biggest rivals.
What was once a fractured coalition of states—often more at odds with each other than with Washington—now finds itself united by necessity. The tariffs may not resolve Sino-Indian border disputes or erase ideological rifts, but they have created incentives for cooperation that did not exist before.
That’s why analysts like Boot argue that Trump is undermining U.S. strategy. “The genius of U.S. foreign policy since World War II has been to prevent hostile powers from coalescing,” he wrote. “By punishing countries that were once friendly or neutral, Trump is reversing that logic. He is driving them together.”
Trump promised his second term would be about “America First.” But in targeting BRICS with some of the highest tariffs in modern history, he may be writing a different story: one of America’s rivals finding common cause.
For now, BRICS remains messy, contradictory, and divided. But thanks to Trump’s heavy hand, it is also more energized than at any point in the past decade.
The bloc may not be poised to replace the U.S.-led order, but it no longer looks dead. Instead, it looks like a work in progress—one accelerated not by Beijing, Moscow, or Brasília, but by Washington.
And as leaders gather in Tianjin, the irony is impossible to miss: Donald Trump, self-styled enemy of BRICS, may yet prove to be its unlikely benefactor.
