Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva is calling a virtual gathering of BRICS leaders next Monday as a way to fight U.S. trade policy. Four people who know about the idea say that the meeting will be mostly about the US government’s trade tariffs and will try to get support for multilateralism from the big emerging economies.
The officials, who asked to remain anonymous because the meeting specifics have not been made public, said that the timing is very important. The Trump administration just put 50% tariffs on goods coming from Brazil. Some products were left out, but this was perceived as an attempt to persuade Brazil’s Supreme Court to stop the trial of former President Jair Bolsonaro, a prominent friend of Donald Trump, who is trying to take over the government.
The meeting is happening just before the trial against Bolsonaro in Brazil’s highest court starts on Tuesday. The Brazilian administration thinks that the U.S. will step up its attacks because of the court case. The U.S. has already done things like cancel the visas of Supreme Court justices and put penalties on the judge who is in charge of the case against the previous right-wing president.
The BRICS countries need to come to a common agreement because the U.S. has set different tariff rates for each member country. Sources say that Lula is also worried that the gathering would evolve into an anti-US summit.
There will be a series of high-level talks amongst BRICS leaders before the virtual summit. Xi Jinping, the President of China, and Narendra Modi, the Prime Minister of India, met in Tianjin over the weekend. On Monday, Modi also met with Vladimir Putin, the President of Russia.
The current state of world politics, especially the recent breakdown between Modi and Trump, may make it easier for the BRICS countries to come to a more cohesive and meaningful agreement. This is a big change because some people in the bloc thought that Modi’s tight relationship with Trump made it harder for them to take a firmer stand against tariffs.
The BRICS countries are worried about Trump’s threats to put more tariffs on them because they are trying to minimize their dependence on the US currency by increasing commerce in their own currencies.