BRICS avowedly seeks to challenge Western-dominated institutions of global economic governance, as well as to displace the US dollar from its entrenched role in the world economy. Its job just got easier thanks to US President Donald Trump’s “Liberation Day” tariff policies.

The BRICS bloc trade has already begun to flourish as economic ties amongst the leading emerging markets rapidly deepens. They are also already slowly encroaching on the US to become increasingly attractive markets for the fast-growing countries of the Global South. And now that Trump has gone off the deep end by launching the most protectionist re-image since the 1930s, that process will only accelerate.

The new tariffs will impede trade, push up inflation in the US and slow global growth, killing globalisation in the process. The BRICS, however, make up about half the globe and they are working on the traditional model of free-trade based on mutually tolerant policies outlined in a detailed 8,000-word joint statement issued by Russian President Vladimir Putin and Chinese President Xi Jinping last year. That stands in sharp contrast to the new US foreign policy concept, floated by Defence Secretary Pete Hegseth in mid-March, that says the US intends to largely cut itself off from the rest of the world as part of the shift to Trump’s transactional multipolar world model.

Trump is breaking ties with America’s long-standing partners. The BRICS are building them with likeminded fellow emerging markets. At their October 2024 summit in Kazan, Russia, the original five members of the BRICS coalition – Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa – welcomed into their fold four new members: Egypt, Ethiopia, Iran and the United Arab Emirates (UAE). In January 2025, Indonesia became the bloc’s tenth member. Nine other nations have been officially designated as “partner countries,” and some two dozen have either been invited to join (for example, Saudi Arabia) or expressed interest in doing so like , Turkey.

“BRICS states including Russia have touted the group’s expansion as a defining moment, heralding the dawn of a post-Western world order in which the “global majority” is finally empowered,” political scientists Stewart Patrick and Erica Hogan said in a recent note for Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.

The significance of the BRICS expansion remains unclear as it is a relatively new as a geopolitical entity, the analysts argue, but on paper the BRICS+ is already a global powerhouse. The bloc already boasts about 45% of the world’s population, generates more than 35% of its GDP in adjusted terms, and produces 30% of its oil. BRICS members already make up four of the five largest countries in the world in PPP adjusted terms, with China number one.

While Trump is withdrawing the US from the international stage, the BRICS have been working frenetically to create an extensive and thickening latticework of intergovernmental cooperation amongst all the countries of the Global South.

These non-western alliances are also becoming institutionalised. In addition to founding dedicated institutions such as the Contingent Reserve Arrangement (CRA), created in 2014 with an initial funding of $100bn, and the New Development Bank (NDB) established in 2015 with an initial subscribed capitalization of $50bn, the coalition has (like the G7 and G20 forums) embraced networked “minilateralism,” launching transnational partnerships and working groups on topics of shared interest from energy security to health, climate change, sustainable development, technology transfer and boosting trade.

The clubbing together of the BRICS in opposition to the US has only been catalysed by Trump’s aggressive stance towards the BRICS and their perception of the US as a military renegade. Both Xi and Putin said their joint vision was based on two principles: – An order with no "neo-colonialism and hegemonism" of any kind; and – An order based on the UN Charter.

The BRICS are on a potential collision course with Trump thanks to their stated goal of abandoning the dollar. The day after his inauguration in January, Trump threatened the BRICS with 100% tariffs if they abandoned the dollar to settle deals.

"We are going to require a commitment from these seemingly hostile countries that they will neither create a new BRICS currency, nor back any other currency to replace the mighty US Dollar or, they will face 100% Tariffs," Trump said on Truth Social in a statement nearly identical to one he posted on November 30.

But there is still a lot of work to do. There is still no consensus on what the groups are hoping to achieve and rivalries between them. The G20, which is steered by Prime Minister Narendra Modi, sees itself as a global economic development club, while the BRICS+, steered by Xi and Putin, sees itself more as a geopolitical rival to the G7. And there are similar arguments within the BRICS+; India is a key member and wants to make the BRICS+ hard to join with a similar stringent set of criteria similar to the EU accession process, whereas Xi and Putin want the accession process to be quick and easy to bulk the organisation up.

So far the BRICS has not laid out a formal trade regime for its members, although promoting intra-member trade is part of its mandate. The NDB, headquartered in China, was established specifically as a multinational development bank, a non-western analogue of the International Monetary Fund (IMF), which explicitly has the promotion of bilateral trade and infrastructure as part of its mandate, but the BRICS have not developed the sophisticated trade relations free trade agreement (FTA) infrastructure that is found in the Global North. Some BRICS countries have signed off on bilateral or regional FTAs through other organisations, such as the Gulf Cooperation Council, but there is no overarching BRICS FTA that includes all BRICS members yet.

But that process is getting under way. At the last BRICS summit in Kazakh the main topic of discussion was to create the BRICS Pay cryptocurrency based on digital versions of national currencies that could be used in place of the dollar to settle mutual trade deals as a first step to integrating a seamless pan-BRICS trade system. All of the members have already started relying on their own currencies to settle deals, but this only works well for pairs with relative balanced trade, like Russia and China, and not for pairs where there are big trade deficits, like Russia and India.

Trump’s tariff assault on his closest and biggest trade partners will only catalyse this process and ironically should drive more trade into the BRICS camp as other emerging markets look to diversify away from their dependencies on trading with the US. And they are likely to be met with open arms.

As the trade war storm was still gathering pace, Xi said in a recent speech that any country that approached China as a partner seeking cooperation would be welcomed. “We will not turn anyone away.”