Blitz Bureau
NEW DELHI: US President Donald Trump has claimed that his threat of a 10 per cent tariff on members of the BRICS scared them off, and almost no one showed up for a meeting the next day. But the BRICS summit continued. Trump issued the threat on July 6 night, but the next day, the leaders of the 11 BRICS countries met for the second day of their summit with full attendance.
Calling BRICS “this little group” of “six countries basically”, he said on July 18, “They BRICS wanted to try and take over the dollar, the dominance of the dollar, and the standard of the dollar”. “And I said, anybody that’s in the BRICS consortium of nations, we’re going to tariff you 10 per cent”, he said. “And they had a meeting the following day, and almost nobody showed up. Seriously”.
Trump asserted they felt like, “Leave me alone. We didn’t want to [be tariffed]”. “They didn’t want to be tariffed. There, it’s amazing”, he added. Although Trump has repeatedly talked about a BRICS currency, the idea has been shot down by India, a founding member of the group and its second-largest economy.
External Affairs Minister S Jaishankar has declared there was no policy to replace the dollar as the reserve currency because it “is the source of international economic stability”. Trump said, “If they really form [a BRICS currency] in a meaningful way, it will end very quickly”. He added, ”They won’t be gone very long. I don’t think they’ll even do it. They’re virtually afraid to [even] meet”.
