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Donald Trump Intensifies Pressures Against Brics With Tariffs and Statements Targeting Brazil and India Amid Debates Over the Dollar and the Bloc’s Expansion.
Members of the Brazilian government and analysts consulted assess that the president of the United States, Donald Trump, has adopted a preemptive offensive to fragment the Brics and contain discussions about reducing dependence on the dollar and other initiatives raised by Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva and leaders of the group.
According to a report published by Eliane Oliveira in the newspaper O Globo this Monday (25), this interpretation suggests that the White House seeks to undermine the bloc’s cohesion before the proposed discussions mature.
The perception in Brasília is that U.S. measures serve as a warning.
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Although the agendas advocated by the Brics progress gradually, Washington’s rhetoric fuels the idea, in the U.S., of an ongoing counter-hegemonic movement.
In this context, the application of tariffs against the bloc’s countries would have as immediate targets the country that chairs the Brics this year, Brazil, and the one that will preside the next year, India, which would weaken internal alignment.
Tariffs and Selective Pressure
According to the diagnosis of government interlocutors, the White House uses tariffs as a tool of selective pressure.
Brazil has been hit by a 50% tariff on exports and is trying to negotiate exemptions.
India, on the other hand, has been targeted with surcharges that, according to Indian authorities, stem from oil purchases from Russia, a country sanctioned by Washington since the war in Ukraine.
In this understanding, the American strategy would not be limited to trade matters.
Part of the government’s assessment is that there would be a broader goal to provoke political, social, and economic instability in key countries of the bloc, exploiting points of domestic vulnerability and internal divisions.
Conflict Over the Dollar
While Trump intensified criticism of the Brazilian Judiciary, Lula has argued that Brics members should reduce costs in bilateral transactions by increasing the use of local currencies.
The president states that he does not intend to diminish the importance of the dollar, but rather to make operations cheaper and more efficient by avoiding costly conversions.
According to an investigation by the newspaper O Globo, the mention of alternative paths tends to unsettle Washington, according to aides.
In response to the Brics’ signals, Trump warned that he would not accept initiatives that, in his view, threaten the dollar’s leadership—whether through payment systems in local currencies or still remote ideas of a common currency.
“We have this little group called Brics, which is disappearing rapidly. But Brics wanted to try to dominate the dollar. And I said: anyone who is in the consortium of Brics nations, we will tariff you at 10%.”
Recent Expansion of the Brics
Until 2023, Brics was composed of Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa.
The group has undergone a recent expansion, with the entry of new countries, including U.S. allies in the Gulf.
Despite the expansion, China remains the Brazil’s main trading partner, holding a significant share of Brazilian exports and imports, maintaining a central axis of economic interdependence.
In the Sino-Russian axis, analysts note a consolidation of financial cooperation.
Studies mentioned by experts indicate that a large part of bilateral trade between China and Russia is already settled in local currencies (yuan and ruble), signaling a process of decoupling from the dollar in specific operations and a search for monetary autonomy.
Experts Analyze Trump’s Offensive
For Marta Fernández, director of the Brics Policy Center and professor at the Institute of International Relations at PUC-Rio, the discussion about alternative currencies touches upon a sensitive point for Trump: the potential challenge to American monetary hegemony.
“Even if a common currency is still a distant horizon, the construction of concrete alternatives to the dollar is enough to raise alarms in Washington. What Brics proposes is not to replace one hegemony with another, but to create a system where different currencies can coexist,” she states.
She assesses that Washington’s recent logic tends to operate in a binary manner—“whoever buys from my enemy is my enemy”—and resorts to secondary tariffs applied selectively.
The Indian case, targeted with surcharges for acquiring Russian oil, emerges as an example, while other partners maintain robust trading relationships with Moscow without proportional measures, reinforcing the perception of selectivity.
In the view of Rubens Duarte, professor at the Army Command and General Staff School and coordinator of Labmundo, the Trump administration seeks to redesign the international order by testing the loyalty of traditional partners and hindering their connections with emerging powers.
In Brics, the pressure falls mainly on Brazil, South Africa, and India, exploiting internal political divisions, historical ties, and, in the case of India, rivalry with China.
“These countries are also the three main democracies in the bloc. Trump’s stance in pressuring Brics countries reflects the potential the bloc has to reshape global politics, but also to ensure political alignment with the countries that are part of the group. By breaking a power structure, it will disturb the U.S., but it is not an agenda that has the original goal of hurting the superpower,” he says.
For Marcos Caramuru, former ambassador of Brazil to China, the support of Brazil and other Brics members for alternative means to the dollar does not constitute an anti-U.S. measure by principle, but an attempt to reduce and streamline exchanges, increasing profit margins and autonomy.
“Brics should not scare Trump. I have not seen any Brics document talk about replacing the dollar. The documents talk about more agile payment systems that are beneficial for trade and the use of local currencies for payment,” he states.
He recalls a statement by Indian Foreign Minister Subrahmanyam Jaishankar that the existence of Brics expresses changes in the international order, although the bloc, for now, has been not very ambitious in expanding its cooperation.
Reaction of the Brazilian Government
The Brazilian government maintains that the U.S., by conditioning negotiations to internal agendas and by sanctioning authorities, oversteps by interfering in domestic issues and disrespects national sovereignty.
O Globo also pointed out that Trump would have indicated that he would only address an agreement with Brazil if the process in the Supreme Court involving Jair Bolsonaro were archived, in addition to imposing sanctions on ministers and officials.
The interpretation in the Planalto is that the pressure combines political signaling and economic instruments.
Meanwhile, Lula reiterates that the Brazilian goal is to enable payments in local currencies, reduce conversion costs, and facilitate trade, without breaking away from the dollar.
The strategy seeks operational autonomy in specific areas, without charting a confrontation agenda.
Even so, the reiteration of the subject and the political moment help explain Washington’s rhetorical escalation.
Amid the intensification, there remains doubt about how far tariffs and sanctions will be able to dislodge minimal consensus in the Brics or reorder priorities of countries seeking to diversify partnerships without breaking historical alliances.
Will the fragmentation that the White House is trying to produce be able to disrupt the agenda of local payments and economic cooperation within the bloc?
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