New York, December 1 (IANS). Newly elected US President Donald Trump has issued a stern warning to the BRICS countries against developing a new currency or adopting any other currency in place of the ‘powerful dollar’. He has threatened that if such a step is taken, 100 per cent tariffs will be imposed on the BRICS countries and they will be effectively banned from US markets.
BRICS also includes the world’s two largest emerging powers, China and India.
“There is no possibility that BRICS will replace the US dollar in international trade, and any country that tries to do so should say goodbye to the US,” Trump wrote on Truth Social on Saturday.
Threatening to close the US market to India and the other eight BRICS members, he said, “We need a commitment from these countries that they will neither create a new BRICS currency nor support any other currency in place of the mighty US dollar.” Otherwise they will face 100 percent tariffs and will have to say goodbye to selling their products in the wonderful American economy.”
After threatening high tariffs on imports from China, Mexico and Canada, Trump has now given this warning to BRICS.
External Affairs Minister (EAM) S. Jaishankar has already clearly rejected the idea of a common currency of the BRICS countries. “There is no such idea as a currency of the BRICS countries,” he said before the group’s summit in Johannesburg last year.
India is the second largest economy among the BRICS countries.
Although Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva nevertheless proposed a common currency at the Johannesburg summit, no progress was made.
During his campaign, Trump asserted that the dollar’s future as the world’s leading trading currency was at risk. He claimed that President Joe Biden is ignoring it. “The idea that the BRICS countries are trying to move away from the dollar and we stand by and watch is over,” he said in a Truth Social post.
Trump’s warning to BRICS countries is a kind of testing. In this it will be seen which countries will publicly adopt a stand like India. This is an early warning for Beijing.
BRICS is an acronym formed from the names of its first members – Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa. This year it was expanded to include Iran, Egypt, Ethiopia and the United Arab Emirates (UAE). Many other countries have applied to join BRICS.
–IANS
-MK
