US President Donald Trump’s mercurial behaviour reminds one of a boy named Calvin in a classic comic strip, Calvin and Hobbes, by Bill Watterson. When Calvin looks at a tiger called Hobbes, the boy sees a real tiger while everyone else sees Hobbes as a toy. Calvin forms a club called ‘Get Rid of Slimy Girls’, and his main purpose is to exclude his neighbour Susie Derkins from the treehouse. However, when he is forced to let others in, Calvin chooses to move the treehouse.
Trump too keeps shifting the goal-post when it comes to using tariffs as his trump card. BRICS is a special target for the whimsical president. Two BRICS members, Brazil and India, have been targeted with 50 per cent tariff. The Trump administration has now threatened to impose additional tariffs on India if the Trump-Putin peace talks fail. Former US National security adviser John Bolton has described Trump’s tariffs against India as “unforced error.” While India’s response is sober and somewhat restrained, Brazilian president Lula has described unreasonable tariffs as “unacceptable blackmail.” He has called upon India, China and other BRICS members to unite against Trump’s tariffs.
The unreasonable tariffs are another form of sanctions. Trump is not known for doing his homework before opening his mouth. He wrongly claimed the US runs a trade deficit with Brazil. The fact is that Washington has a $7.4 billion trade surplus with Brazil. Another BRICS member, South Africa, faces 30 per cent tariffs. Trump has cut off aid to this country accusing the government of discriminating against its white minority without any proof. He has already announced that he will not attend the Johannesburg Summit of G20 in November this year. China and Russia are targets of a different kind.
Even before assuming the presidency, Trump had said that BRICS countries trying to create a new currency to replace the US dollar “will face 100 per cent tariffs and should expect to say goodbye to selling into the wonderful US economy.” In his attempt to isolate China, Trump has ended up isolating and antagonising India, supposedly Washington’s strategic ally in countering China, Brazil and South Africa. Now that Putin has refused to play ball on Ukraine, Trump may see him as a villain for not allowing him to “end the Ukraine war” and thereafter claim the Nobel. Trump’s trashing of BRICS is not really about India, Brazil and BRICS, it is about distraction and perception, and a chance to reconnect and refocus his base. To Trump, tariff is the ‘art of the deal.’ In fact, Trump’s deputy chief of staff Stephen Miller, boasted recently before the media, “You have been watching the greatest economic master strategy from an American President in history.” Why is Trump targeting BRICS?
Trump believes BRICS is challenging the existing world order which made America the hegemon. No one now believes that BRICS is merely a bigger talk shop or a meaningless acronym. Its vision of the new world order has rattled the West. Many Western analysts now argue that BRICS is visualising a world without the West. Way back in 2007, American bi-monthly National Interest published an essay by Naazneen Barma, Ely Ratner and Steven Weber under the title ‘The World without the West.’ It argued that the world without the West “is becoming preferentially and densely interconnected.” It further said that “the traditional tools of leverage that Europe and the United States have been able to deploy… are losing some of their effectiveness.”
Trump’s shilly-shallying behaviour and irrational tariffs regime have forced BRICS and other members of the Global South to make what former foreign secretary Nirupama Rao calls “very pragmatic strategic recalibrations.” How do you deal with a leader whose presidency has become a “grift machine.” British journalist Anoosh Chakelian says that we are in the “age of grift.” If one is “not spotting it,” she maintains, one is “probably on the end of it.” De-dollarisation myths are being spread by Trump. There is no consensus among BRICS on de-dollarisation. What they are attempting is to make national currency viable where possible.
A few options are being explored to facilitate intra-BRICS trade. There are few takers for schemes like a gold-backed common currency, dubbed the “Unit.” While most members are wary of China’s yuan, Beijing itself doesn’t want the yuan to be pushed as a reserved currency. No serious discussion on de-dollarisation has taken place. Member states are aware of the long and tedious process. It took Europe about 40 years to adopt Euro from the first talks to actual coins in pockets – and that was with countries that shared borders and similar systems.
The BRICS currency is a fairy tale. Trump is fearful of losing the dollar’s paramount status. History tells us that regimes, kings, kingdoms and countries that had the reserve currency status suffered immense economic hardships once they lost that dominance. Obviously, Trump doesn’t believe in any new world order. He wants only a free-for-all where the strongest strive to prevail and the weaker must accommodate. He refuses to believe that the monetary system established 50 years ago is crumbling.
But Trump knows BRICS has begun to hurt the dollar’s global domination which may pave the way for Bretton Woods 3.0. Trump has created a new divide in the West. What Robert Kagan wrote in his famous book ‘Of Paradise and Power’ in 2003 describing the United States and Europe as being from different planets has proved to be true. There are also fears in Europe of a “Yalta II” scenario, echoing the 1945 conference in which the United States, the United Kingdom, and the Soviet Union carved up the future of post-World War II Eastern Europe. In any case, the war in Ukraine marks the end of an exceptional period in human history – 70 years of peace between the world’s Great Powers.
All said, the vision of BRICS worries the West, no matter what they say. The West’s Holy Empire is crumbling. The magnitude of the crunching and grinding of geopolitical plates that we see today has no precedent. Trump may be hoping his policy would bring BRICS members to their knees. It may end up as BRICS’ new building blocks. History may not be back. We are witnessing what former German Chancellor Olaf Scholz called ‘Zeitenwende’, a turn of the times.
(The writer comments on global affairs)