In a post on Truth Social Saturday, President-elect Donald Trump said he would impose a 100% tariff on the BRICS geopolitical coalition of non-Western countries if the group moves away from trading using the U.S. dollar.
“The idea that the BRICS Countries are trying to move away from the Dollar while we stand by and watch is OVER,” Trump wrote. “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.”
“They can go find another ‘sucker!’ There is no chance that the BRICS will replace the U.S. Dollar in International Trade, and any Country that tries should wave goodbye to America,” the president-elect added.
The BRICS alliance is a coalition of non-Western countries that convened for the first official BRIC summit in 2009, with Brazil, Russia, India and China joining the informal group. South Africa joined a year later, cementing the BRICS name.
At a 2023 summit, the group expanded for the first time in over a decade, inviting Egypt, Ethiopia, Iran, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates.
At the same summit, the issue of “de-dollarization,” or reducing the influence of the U.S. dollar in global trade, gained steam, though it’s not a new idea for the group.
Experts are skeptical that BRICS would succeed in creating its own currency for global trade, pointing to infighting between the member nations and major differences in the way the countries run their economies and financial institutions.
Still, some members of BRICS are among the United States’ largest trading partners, including India and China.
According to the Office of the U.S. Trade Representative, the United States’ goods-and-services trade with China totaled an estimated $758.4 billion in 2022 and the goods-and-services trade between the U.S. and India totaled an estimated $191.8 billion in 2022.
Representatives for the BRICS countries’ embassies in the U.S. did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
This is Trump’s second time this week threatening to raise tariffs on outside nations.
On Monday, the president-elect wrote in a post on Truth Social that he planned to impose a 25% tariff on products imported from Mexico and Canada. He argued that the purpose of the tariff would be to curb the fentanyl crisis.