The recently concluded summit of Brics+ countries has raised questions about whether the bloc can stand together during the current geopolitical storm over the new US foreign policy.
On July 6-7 Brazilian President Lula da Silva hosted a poorly attended summit of leaders from the bloc, which was founded by Brazil, Russia, India and China in 2009. They were later joined by SA and last year Egypt, Ethiopia, Iran, Indonesia and the United Arab Emirates were admitted.
Absent from the summit were heavy hitters such as China’s Xi Jinping and Russia’s Vladimir Putin. Xi has always attended these summits, while Putin has limited his overseas travels since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine due to an arrest warrant for alleged war crimes issued by the International Criminal Court.
Xi’s absence is noteworthy, and should be concerning. He has been a significant supporter of the Global South and a return to multilateralism, and a champion of an alternative to the West-led global order.
According to Brics+ diplomats, Xi’s absence is believed to be a protest at Brazil’s decision to allow Indian prime minister Narendra Modi to undertake a state visit around the time of the bloc’s summit. Others say it has to do with Modi’s appeasement strategy towards the US.
Of the key members, only Modi and President Cyril Ramaphosa showed up, and the new members also mostly sent representatives rather than heads of state.
This was the first summit since Donald Trump returned to the Oval Office as the 47th US president. Unlike his first term, which largely focused on the US trade and currency wars with China and fighting immigration, Trump’s second term has been characterised by import tariffs imposed on almost all US trading partners.
Trump is single-minded in his “America First” policy, and he has utter disdain for multilateralism. He sees Brics+ as an anti-American grouping whose mission includes dedollarisation — replacing the US greenback as the global reserve currency.
Trump prefers cutting trade deals with individual countries. His strategy, which has rattled the Brics+ bloc and shaken its cohesion as a unit, is to slap swingeing import tariffs on foreign goods and then call for a deal.
At the start of this month SA was hit with 30% tariffs, sounding a death knell to its participation in the African Growth & Opportunity Act. This despite Pretoria’s offer of a bilateral trade deal, made during Ramaphosa’s recent visit to the White House. China is in advanced talks for a new trade deal with the US, and India has already cut one that panders to Trump’s wishes.
As well as condemning the wars raging worldwide during their summit, the Brics+ leaders attacked the US tariff war and the havoc it is causing in the global economy. But the statement made no mention of what the bloc is planning to do collectively to counter these damaging effects.
On Monday Trump announced that his patience with Putin has run out, threatening 100% tariffs on Russia if he doesn’t end the war with Ukraine within 50 days. More concerning, Trump also threatened secondary sanctions against Russia’s allies, especially those that don’t succumb to his “Make a deal” doctrine.
It is becoming increasingly clear from the first few months of Trump’s presidency that he seeks to divide and rule, and that he wants to isolate and hem in China.
In a way the Brics+ bloc seems to have resigned itself to the first strand of Trump’s approach. Wittingly or unwittingly, it has proceeded with individual strategies to deal with Trump.
As for the second pillar — asking China’s partners to dump it — the Brics+ countries will find that difficult. Only India appears sanguine about starting to “see other people”; SA and Brazil are less keen.
Like SA, Brazil has attracted Trump’s wrath over domestic issues. The impending arrest of Lula’s predecessor Jair Bolsonaro has put it inTrump’s firing line.
The summit has shown that the bloc is already struggling to stick together in the face of external, mostly US-inspired, geopolitical threats.
• Dludlu, a former editor of Sowetan, is CEO of the Small Business Institute.
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