From July 6 to 7, BRICS—a bloc of rising powers once dismissed as a loose economic coalition—held its 17th annual summit in Rio de Janeiro. Leaders from Brazil, India, and South Africa were present, while China and Russia sent top officials. Against the backdrop of growing global polarization and open threats from the United States, the summit signalled that BRICS is no longer just a talking shop; it is becoming a force Washington can’t ignore.
U.S. President Donald Trump’s threats loomed over the summit. On its opening day, Trump announced 10 percent tariffs on any country “aligning themselves with the Anti-American policies of BRICS.” These are not Trump’s first attacks on the organization. In 2024, Trump announced 100 percent tariffs on BRICS countries if they pursued the creation of their own currency to rival the U.S. dollar. His TruthSocial post from the time read:
We require a commitment from these countries that they will neither create a new BRICS currency nor back any other currency to replace the mighty U.S. dollar or they will face 100% tariffs and should expect to say goodbye to selling into the wonderful U.S. economy.
Despite Washington’s warnings, BRICS keeps expanding. In 2025, Indonesia became a full member, joining Brazil, Russia, India, China, South Africa, Egypt, Ethiopia, Iran, and the United Arab Emirates. There are also 10 “partner countries” in BRICS, whose representatives can attend summits although they have no decision-making power. These are Belarus, Bolivia, Kazakhstan, Cuba, Malaysia, Nigeria, Thailand, Uganda, Uzbekistan, and Vietnam, the latter of which became the organization’s tenth partner country last month. Algeria and Türkiye have been invited to join as partner countries, while Saudi Arabia has been asked to join as a member. Azerbaijan, Pakistan, and Venezuela have applied for BRICS membership (though Brazil vetoed Venezuela’s entry into the bloc in 2024).
Cumulatively, BRICS’s 10 members and 10 partner countries comprise 56 percent of the world’s population and 44 percent of global GDP. They are the global majority in population and may soon become the global majority in economic production.
This year’s summit was held under the theme “Strengthening Global South Cooperation for a More Inclusive and Sustainable Governance.” Speaking at the assembly, Brazil’s President Lula stated:
BRICS is the heir to the Non-Aligned Movement… With multilateralism under attack, our autonomy is in check once again.
Over the past five years, numerous international crises have put a merciless spotlight on the inequity embedded in the prevailing global system. During the COVID-19 pandemic, vaccine apartheid between Northern and Southern nations showed the failure of global medical systems under the U.S.-led capitalist order. COVID was followed by a worldwide energy crisis that illuminated the same global inequities, as Amy Myers Jaffe writes:
Europe’s intensive energy stockpiling in the summer of 2022 caused a huge jump in global prices for liquefied natural gas. In response, many utilities in less developed nations cut their natural gas purchases, creating price-related electricity outages in some regions.
On vaccine apartheid and the energy crisis, Tim Sahay and Kate McKenzie note:
In both these cases, developing countries were reminded that the existing world order is rigged against them. Global inequality rose sharply. Their shortages of money (especially the right kind of money) and inability to borrow cheaply put them at the back of the queue. The grim fact that the West not only denied poor countries [intellectual property] for technology to make their own mRNA vaccines in the hour of distress, but hoarded vaccines past their sell-by date, revealed the system’s bankruptcy.
Since 2020, the consolidation of BRICS has accelerated. At this year’s summit, members adopted“126 commitments covering global governance, finance, health, artificial intelligence, climate change, and other strategic areas.” The organization also committed to strengthening cooperation amongst member states in three areas:
politics and security, economy and finance, and cultural and people-to-people cooperation.
Dedollarization was a key focus of the summit. BRICS announced plans to move forward with developing a cross-border payment system, a crucial step toward challenging the U.S. dollar’s dominance in global trade. By building an alternative to U.S.-controlled financial networks like the SWIFT system, member states aim to reduce their exposure to unilateral sanctions, which have become a central tool of American economic power in recent years. “The world needs to find a way that our trade relations don’t have to pass through the dollar,” Lula told journalists.
Another major focus of this year’s summit was artificial intelligence. All 10 members, plus partner states Bolivia, Vietnam, and Cuba, discussed “the transformative potential of AI and the need for ethical and inclusive regulations.” BRICS emphasized that any global AI governance regime should “promote advancements in productivity and quality of life, with a focus on sustainable development,” and be characterized by “responsible development… in alignment with national laws and international standards.” BRICS also stressed that AI development “must prioritize safety, prevent malicious uses and be based on global collaboration for responsible regulation.”
From Rio, BRICS members decried Trump’s tariff threats against organization members and condemned the recent U.S.-Israeli bombing of Iran. The group’s joint statement described the targeting of “civilian infrastructure and peaceful nuclear facilities” as a “violation of international law.” BRICS members also expressed “grave concern” over Israel’s genocidal assault on Gaza. Lula directly addressed the crisis in his summit speech, stating:
We cannot remain indifferent to the genocide carried out by Israel in Gaza, the indiscriminate killing of innocent civilians and the use of hunger as a weapon of war.
It is significant that BRICS condemned U.S.-Israeli aggression and the assault on Gaza. However, the organization is not primarily a political alliance, and its leadership lacks a unified stance or coordinated strategy for confronting military actions, even when they directly impact the region and member states.
Mao Zedong once described Israel as one of two “bases of imperialism” in Asia (the other being Taiwan). Today, Chinese policy toward the U.S. empire’s main ally in the Middle East has changed significantly. Despite statements in support of Palestine, China—the economic core of BRICS—is currently Israel’s second-largest trading partner, and the Chinese and Israeli ambassadors met recently to discuss “deepening China-Israel economic and trade cooperation.” Russia, too, has a close strategic and economic relationship with Israel, as does India. These partnerships continued as Israel launched illegal and unprovoked attacks on Iran, a BRICS member, in June.
If BRICS were serious about mounting a strong challenge to imperial power, that effort would include cutting ties with and sanctioning key outposts of U.S. military influence, such as Israel, and taking a unified stance against aggressive U.S.-aligned states. But the group has not taken such steps. In fact, some of its own members—such as Egypt, Saudi Arabia, and the UAE—have actively advanced U.S. geopolitical interests in their respective regions.
What, then, is the overarching goal of BRICS? Its diverse membership is unified by a few goals, as Sahay and McKenzie write:
The BRIC forum was formally established in Russia in 2009 [South Africa would not become a member until 2014]. It was in part intended to design a response to the 2008 crash that would allow its four member states to insulate from the shockwaves wrought by the financial crisis. Beyond that, members had a common goal of reforming global governance, redistributing voting rights in the IMF and World Bank, improving South—South trade, and expanding local currency settlement.
In short, BRICS members seek to insulate themselves from the fluctuations of an increasingly sclerotic and irrational U.S.-led global order. They view increased South-South cooperation as a way of creating space for steady economic collaboration outside the U.S.-dominated international financial architecture, which is unstable and easily weaponized against states targeted by imperialism.
South-South cooperation, and a greater voice for historically underdeveloped countries at global fora, is the desire of many governments around the world, including some that are geostrategically aligned with the U.S. As UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres said at the 2023 BRICS summit:
Today’s global governance structures reflect yesterday’s world [and] must reform to reflect today’s power and economic realities.
Insulation from the U.S.-led capitalist order does not equate to breaking away from it, certainly not in Samir Amin’s sense of delinking, defined as a “refusal to submit national-development strategy to the imperatives of ‘globalization.’” In fact, BRICS members remain active participants in the Bretton Woods institutions—the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund—which play a central role in upholding the global capitalist system. BRICS has advocated for fairer governance at the World Bank and IMF, primarily by pushing for a more balanced distribution of voting rights. However, it has stopped short of challenging the existence of these institutions or the market-driven principles that underpin their policies. At the same time, BRICS has developed its own alternatives—most notably the New Development Bank (NDB) and the Contingent Reserve Arrangement (CRA)—though these lack the financial weight of the institutions they aim to rival. Internal imbalances persist as well: original BRICS members hold outsized influence at the NDB, while China alone controls 40 percent of voting power at the CRA.
India in particular is willing to play both sides of the widening geopolitical divide:
Larger developing countries like India have shown themselves to be ruthlessly self-interested. Since the invasion of Ukraine, the BJP government has been buying Russian oil at a discount. In May, Prime Minister Narendra Modi was at the Hiroshima Quad firming up an informal coalition with the U.S., Australia, and Japan, against China. In June, he went to Washington and won technology transfers of everything from jet engines to chips; in July he was in France finalizing nuclear-reactor and defense deals with President Emmanuel Macron.
On the varying appeal of BRICS to full and potential members, Sahay and McKenzie explain:
New and aspiring joiners to the club have a mix of motivations…For Egypt, which has struggled with dollar shortages and IMF programs for years, transactions in local currencies are attractive. For Indonesia, diversification of trade and diplomatic ties is a show of its long standing non-alignment policy. Nigeria, meanwhile, seeks economic ties with larger countries and a bigger regional role on the continent. For the UAE, the bloc is a way to further its regional influence. Saudi Arabia (invited but not yet accepted) has a similar view. According to Layla Ali at Gulf Research Center, both countries “see the BRICS summit as a strategic platform to expand their diplomatic and economic ties on a global scale.”
Despite their differences, BRICS members share a common goal: to secure greater national sovereignty within the framework of U.S.-led global capitalism—an outcome they see as key to long-term prosperity. This ambition has made BRICS a growing source of concern for the White House, as reflected in Trump’s repeated threats against nations engaging with the bloc.
Why, then, is Washington so alarmed by BRICS, given that it’s a coalition of largely capitalist governments? Because, as Monthly Review explains BRICS represents something deeper:
Today’s BRICS grouping, now expanded under BRICS+ to include Iran, Egypt, Ethiopia, and the United Arab Emirates, is certainly not anticapitalist, or even progressive in terms of national politics or class relations. But it represents a powerful economic bloc emanating from the Global South, unified by the common desire to achieve a degree of independence and nonalignment in relation to the imperialist core of the world economy. Such struggles for autonomy—insofar as they are genuine—are everywhere rooted in popular forces and aspirations.
The increase in South-South cooperation is real. Since 2000, exports to the U.S. from BRICS founding members have decreased, with India being the sole exception. These countries’ holdings of U.S. treasuries have fallen to under 20 percent of world holdings for the first time in nearly two decades.
U.S. opposition to the BRICS bloc solidified in 2020, when the momentum of global change became undeniable. The West’s financial sanctions on Russia, and its efforts to topple China’s technological dominance, should be viewed as part of the Western effort to prevent a multipolar world from emerging.
The diverse economic structures, political systems, and resources of BRICS members mean disagreements are inevitable. One such divide was on full display at the 2025 summit: green energy versus oil and gas.
China’s remarkable progress in green technologies has made these options increasingly appealing throughout the Global South. China exports vast amounts of clean energy technology to BRICS members, and by 2024, renewable energy sources surpassed fossil fuels as the primary electricity generator within BRICS countries. Yet, some members like Russia and Iran remain heavily dependent on fossil fuel extraction. Reflecting this tension, host Lula condemned climate denialism and called for urgent action, even as the summit’s joint statement acknowledged petroleum would continue to play a role in the Global South’s economies.
Importantly, the BRICS summit emphasized the responsibility of wealthy Global North countries to finance the world’s transition to sustainable energy. Since the Global North has contributed 92 percent of excess carbon emissions since 1850, BRICS members view it as entirely reasonable that these nations support fossil fuel—dependent countries in the Global South as they seek development paths less reliant on fossil fuels.
Beyond differing views on energy policy, several BRICS members, partner states, and applicants are embroiled in tense geopolitical conflicts that could undermine the organization’s cohesion. Egypt and Ethiopia remain locked in a war of words over Ethiopia’s Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam on the Nile, which Egypt calls an “existential threat” due to its impact on Egypt’s water access. Iran is at odds with Gulf monarchies—including fellow BRICS members Saudi Arabia and the UAE—who, during the 2015—2022 Saudi-led bombing of Yemen, used Western-supplied arms to fight Ansar Allah, a key Iranian ally. Meanwhile, relations between founding member Russia and applicant Azerbaijan are fraying. And if Pakistan’s membership is approved, it will face the challenge of cooperating with India, a country with which it recently fought a war.
If BRICS manages to overcome its internal divisions and continues to grow, what will that mean for the West? Is there any chance of increased Western cooperation with BRICS as a way to counterbalance rising U.S. belligerence? The answer is probably no.
The Trump administration has intensified its aggressive stance toward allied nations, making it clear that countries aligned with the fading U.S. empire should expect more threats and coercion as America’s global influence wanes. Despite this, Europe and Canada remain firmly tied to the American project, enduring threats of retaliation and economic fallout from anti-Russia sanctions in order to sustain the broader Western effort to undermine Russia and China—and to preserve Western dominance.
For Canada, BRICS should offer the clearest path toward diversifying economic relations—something Prime Minister Mark Carney claims to be pursuing. Some isolated voices in the Canadian media have made this case, but their calls have gone largely unheard in the corridors of power. Under Justin Trudeau, Canada eagerly aligned with the U.S. effort to curb China’s global rise, exemplified by the 2018 arrest of Huawei CFO Meng Wanzhou and the adoption of soaring tariffs on Chinese electric vehicles—measures closely mirroring Washington’s playbook. Canada has also fully committed to the failing Western strategy of sanctioning Russia into “rubble.” For Carney as well, China and Russia remain central geopolitical adversaries, despite the looming threat of U.S. economic coercion against Canada itself.
In Ottawa, almost all discussion around economic diversification revolves around the increasingly marginalized European continent rather than the growing and comparatively dynamic BRICS bloc. As such, Ottawa’s horizons appear to be trapped within the North Atlantic, a fact that does not bode well for Canada’s future relevance on the world stage.
The future of BRICS will depend on members’ ability to overcome their disagreements, to deepen technological collaboration, and to remain committed to the goal of increasing national sovereignty in an era of U.S. decline. Washington is eager to disrupt this process, including by undermining the “no limits” partnership between Russia and China.
The success of the BRICS project does not signal an overthrow of capitalism as a global system, but it does mark a significant shift away from Western dominance. It reflects a broader push for greater national sovereignty among countries in the Global South. The 2025 BRICS summit underscored that the center of gravity in the global economy is moving steadily southward. If South-South trade continues to expand and deepen, the tools of economic coercion traditionally used by the West may lose their power in the years ahead.