In a post on Truth Social Saturday, President-elect Donald Trump said he would impose a 100% tariff on the BRICS geopolitical coalition of non-Western countries if the group moves away from trading with the US dollar.
“The idea that the BRICS countries are trying to move away from the dollar while we watch is GONE,” Trump wrote. “We need a commitment from these countries that they will neither create a new BRICS currency nor support any other currency to replace the mighty US dollar, otherwise they will face 100% tariffs and expect to say goodbye taking sales in the beautiful USA. Economy.”
“They can have another ‘sucker!’ There is no chance that the BRICS will replace the US dollar in international trade, and any country that tries to do so must say goodbye to America,” the President-elect added.
The BRICS Alliance is a coalition of non-Western countries that met in 2009 for the first official BRIC Summit, with Brazil, Russia, India and China joining the informal group. South Africa joined a year later, cementing the BRICS name.
At a 2023 summit, the group expanded for the first time in more than a decade, inviting Egypt, Ethiopia, Iran, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates.
At the same summit, the issue of “de-dollarization,” or reducing the influence of the U.S. dollar on global trade, gained momentum, although it is not a new idea for the group.
Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Donald Trump in 2020 in New Delhi, India.
Experts are skeptical that the BRICS would succeed in creating its own currency for global trade, pointing to infighting among member states and major differences in the way countries run their economies and financial institutions.
Yet some members of the BRICS are among the United States’ largest trading partners, including India and China.
According to the Office of the US Trade Representative, US trade in goods and services with China was estimated at $758.4 billion in 2022, and trade in goods and services between the US and India was estimated at $758.4 billion in 2022. an estimated $191.8 billion.
Representatives of the BRICS embassies in the US did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
This is the second time this week that Trump has threatened to raise tariffs on foreign countries.
On Monday, the president-elect wrote in a post on Truth Social that he planned to impose a 25% tariff on products imported from Mexico and Canada. He argued that the purpose of the tariff would be to curb the fentanyl crisis.
In the same post, he threatened a 10% tariff on China, writing: “I have had many conversations with China about the massive amounts of drugs, particularly Fentanyl, being sent to the United States – but to no avail. Until they stop, we will charge China an additional 10% tariff, on top of all additional tariffs, on all of their many products entering the United States of America.
On Friday, Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau traveled to West Palm Beach to meet Trump at his Mar-a-Lago resort.
On Saturday, Trump called their conversation “very productive” in a separate social media post.
Trump added: “I have made it very clear that the United States will no longer stand idly by as our citizens fall victim to the scourge of this drug epidemic, caused primarily by the drug cartels and the fentanyl flowing in from China. Too much death and hardship! Prime Minister Trudeau is committed to working with us to end this terrible destruction of American families.”
In a letter to Trump on Tuesday, Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum wrote that “migration and drug use in the United States cannot be addressed through threats or tariffs.”
“What is needed is cooperation and mutual understanding to tackle these important challenges. For every tariff, there will be an in-kind response until we endanger our shared businesses,” she added.
Sheinbaum and Trump spoke on the phone Wednesday, but the conversation led to a “he said, she said” controversy over whether Sheinbaum had agreed to stop immigration from Mexico into the United States, something Trump claimed he had done.
In her own recollection of the conversation, Sheinbaum wrote of We reiterate that Mexico’s position is not to close its borders, but instead to build bridges between the government and the people.”
This article was originally published on NBCNews.com
