BRICS seeks to fill void left by G-20 as Trump’s trade war rages

Major emerging market nations are striving to turn the BRICS group into a global forum capable of addressing the economic and political chaos unleashed by Donald Trump’s trade war.

Foreign ministers from the group named after its founding members — Brazil, Russia, India, China and, later, South Africa — are meeting Monday for the first time since Trump’s policies upended not only the world economy, but also traditional multilateral institutions such as the Group of 20, where consensus has become unattainable.

The upheaval has put BRICS in position to seize the sort of global influence its most prominent members have long sought, especially after it expanded its roster to include new nations — Egypt, Ethiopia, Indonesia, Iran and the United Arab Emirates — in recent years. The bloc now accounts for roughly half of the planet’s population and about 40 per cent of global GDP.

During a two-day gathering in Rio de Janeiro, BRICS foreign ministers will devote a good amount of time to discussing how to react to Trump’s tariffs. China, facing 145 per cent levies on most exports to the US, has indicated that it would like to leverage the gathering to push back against the US. 

When asked about China’s expectation for the meeting at a briefing last week, a spokesperson for its finance ministry stopped short of naming the US but criticized those “wielding the big stick of tariffs, sabotaging international fairness and order, and heightening global security risks.” The spokesperson also called for “closer cooperation” and “joint effort” among the BRICS nations. 

In a statement that will be published on Tuesday, BRICS foreign ministers will have strong words against unilateral measures on trade, without citing Trump or the US, according to two Brazilian government officials. While other countries would like the group to publicly rebuke Trump, that’s not the consensus view among its members, they said, requesting anonymity to talk about ongoing discussions.

The ability to find consensus among diverse points of view is precisely what BRICS will need to show in order to prove it can avoid the profound divisions that have eroded the effectiveness of institutions like the United Nations and the G-20.

Defending multilateralism 

In Rio, foreign ministers will begin talks on the priorities of Brazil’s yearlong BRICS presidency: more aggressive action on climate change, improved public health cooperation, bolstering trade ties between member nations, and a defense of the very idea of multilateralism. 

Brazilian officials caution that the point of the bloc, which was formed nearly two decades ago, has never been to challenge US international leadership or dismantle a global order led by Washington and the West. 

“The view that BRICS is an anti-American bloc is completely wrong,” Brazilian ambassador Mauricio Lyrio said in February, during a preparatory meeting in Brasilia. “The bloc was created to promote the development of developing countries, not to antagonize rich countries.”

Brazil’s agenda has nevertheless positioned BRICS as a potential bulwark of multilateralism at a time when Trump has slapped tariffs on nearly every nation while turning his back on global institutions and accords. 

Since taking office in January, he has moved to yank the US out of the Paris Agreement and World Health Organization, gutted the country’s chief foreign aid agency, and raised doubts about continued American participation in the G-20.

A major sign that BRICS nations may ramp up their efforts to fill the resulting void came last week, when Brazil and the UN organized a virtual event on climate change that more than a dozen world leaders attended.

Trump and the US weren’t invited; instead, the headliner was China’s Xi Jinping, who pledged that his nation would remain committed to global cooperation in the climate fight “regardless of changes in the international landscape.”

The event was the latest indication of Xi’s intensifying efforts to paint Beijing as a friendlier, more reliable ally than Trump’s US as he seeks to deepen ties to other parts of the world — including the European Union, with which he’s feuded.

Intensifying trade ties

It was also a show of strength for Brazil’s Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, who brought leaders like Xi, France’s Emmanuel Macron and European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen together to prepare for his nation’s hosting of the UN’s signature climate summit in November. 

Despite a haphazard stint as the G-20 president last year, Lula has continued to assert himself in major global discussions. He served a key role in final negotiations of a trade deal between the EU and Mercosur, a South American customs union, at the end of 2024. Both Macron and UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres have also sought his voice in global debates about artificial intelligence.

“Brazil is increasingly playing a leadership role in geopolitics, by hosting the BRICS summit this year, pushing for the Mercosur deal, seeking to increase intra-regional trade and generally being outspoken in defense of multilateral institutions and the multilateral trade system,” said Jimena Zuniga, Latin America Geoeconomics analyst at Bloomberg Economics.

Now Lula is pushing the BRICS nations to improve trade ties among themselves to boost their power globally — and against unilateral decisions from Trump and the US. 

The creation of a common currency, an idea that led Trump to threaten 100% tariffs against bloc members, is “not under discussion,” Lyrio said in February. But Brazil wants to continue efforts to develop local payment systems and instruments that can better facilitate trade and investment between the nations, a longstanding BRICS priority.

That, however, points to one of the problems that has dogged BRICS since its inception. The group has always been longer on ambition than accomplishment, in part because members have struggled to get on the same page about its ultimate aims. 

Beijing has traditionally seen BRICS as part of its push to counter the US, but others have tread more carefully to avoid irking Western allies. Border disputes have frayed relations between China and India, the group’s two largest economies, and Prime Minister Narendra Modi has only upped his efforts to move closer to Washington since Trump’s return.

Expansion has made BRICS even less cohesive, particularly in comparison to blocs like the G-7, the group of rich, western nations that dominate the global order. And while Trump has created an opening, his trade war with China has also forced each nation into individual trade negotiations that risk undermining Lula’s calls to show strength by sticking together.

“We can’t keep looking for individual ways out for each country,” the Brazilian leader said in a March speech. “The world is divided into blocs, and whoever is more organized can do more.”

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Published on April 29, 2025