Trump threatens the BRICS countries with tariffs and calls on them to use dollars

President-elect Donald Trump speaks during a meeting with the House GOP conference in Washington.
AP/Nov. 13. 2024

President-elect Donald Trump on Saturday called on the BRICS, a group of nine countries with emerging economies, to commit not to create a new currency or support another currency to replace the U.S. dollar, making threats to impose punitive tariffs on their imports if they fail to comply.

“We require these countries to commit to neither creating a new BRICS currency nor supporting any other currency to replace the mighty US dollar, otherwise they will face 100 percent tariffs and should expect to refrain from selling in “To say goodbye to the wonderful USA economy,” Trump wrote in a post on his social media platform Truth Social on Saturday. “You can find another ‘sucker!’ There is no chance that the BRICS will replace the US dollar in international trade, and any country that tries should say goodbye to America.”

The forum includes Brazil, China, Egypt, Ethiopia, India, Iran, Russia, South Africa and the United Arab Emirates. The group aims to build an international financial system that is less dependent on the United States and the European Union.

The threat against the BRICS nations was part of a flurry of trade-related demands made by Trump on his Truth Social account in recent days.

On Friday, Trump had dinner with Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau at the president-elect’s Mar-a-Lago club in Palm Beach, Florida, just days after Trump warned on social media that he was prepared to impose sweeping tariffs on Canadians and Raise Mexicans and Chinese goods on his first day in office.

The president-elect said the threatened tariffs, which include a 25% tariff on Mexican and Canadian goods and another 10% on Chinese goods, would be aimed at stopping an “invasion” of drugs and migrants into the United States.

The term BRICS was coined nearly 25 years ago by a Goldman Sachs economist to describe the large, fast-growing economies of Brazil, Russia, India and China.

Russia, in particular, has pushed discussions about building an alternative global money transfer system after a group of its banks were banned from the main global payments system SWIFT following Russian President Vladimir Putin’s invasion of Ukraine in 2022. Currently, the US dollar dominates Global trade creates a constant demand for dollars around the world, giving the US influence over other countries.

Trump has previously said he would seek to punish countries that try to use currencies other than the dollar for trade. At a campaign rally in September, he said he would impose 100% tariffs on countries that try to shift away from the dollar.

The idea of ​​a BRICS currency has already been discussed, but is still far from being implemented. Still, in October, Putin took the stage at the group’s annual summit, held this year in Russia itself, with a model of what a paper version of the currency might look like.

Trump has repeatedly tried to use trade policy to address unrelated issues, sometimes using threats on social media as a negotiating tactic.

In May 2019, he announced a series of escalating tariffs against Mexico to pressure the Mexican government to prevent Central American migrants from crossing its territory. Trump said he would impose a 5% tariff on Mexican goods, increasing in 5% increments each month until the border issue is resolved.

The announcement sparked criticism at the time from business leaders and some Senate Republicans, who called it an abuse of the president’s bargaining power. Just over a week later, Trump rescinded the tariff threat and said Mexico had agreed to take “strong action” to stem the flow. That same year, he accused China on Twitter of slow progress in trade negotiations.

Trump said Saturday afternoon that he had a “very productive meeting” with Trudeau where they discussed energy, the Arctic, the drug crisis, immigration and “fair trade deals that don’t put American workers at risk and the U.S.’s massive trade deficit.” Canada.”

“I have made it very clear that the United States will no longer stand idly by as our citizens fall victim to the scourge of this drug epidemic, caused primarily by the drug cartels and fentanyl leaking in from China,” Trump wrote in his letter in a post on his social media platform Truth Social, adding that Trudeau was “committed to working with us to end this terrible devastation to U.S. families.”

Trump made no promises in his social media posts about what actions he would take after the talks.

Trudeau told reporters Saturday morning that he had “an excellent conversation” with Trump during his dinner at Mar-a-Lago, but when asked if tariffs would be brought up, he dodged the press. Trudeau posted a message on X on Saturday thanking Trump for the dinner and adding: “I look forward to the work we can do together again.”

A Canadian government official said the dinner lasted three hours and the group discussed fentanyl, border security, NATO, energy and a variety of other topics. This person was granted anonymity to describe the contents of the private meeting.

Canada is the U.S.’s largest trading partner and the primary buyer of U.S. goods, making this relationship critically important.

Trump and Trudeau were joined for dinner Friday night by some of Trump’s Cabinet members and their spouses. The group included North Dakota Gov. Doug Burgum (right), whom he appointed as Secretary of the Interior; Interim co-chair Howard Lutnick, Trump’s pick for commerce secretary; and Rep. Michael Waltz (R-Florida), whom Trump appointed as national security adviser. Waltz has frequently criticized Trudeau, particularly on issues related to China.

Also in attendance, according to a photo he shared on social media, was Senator-elect Dave McCormick, the Republican winner who won Pennsylvania’s Senate election. Trudeau’s entourage, meanwhile, included Canadian Public Safety Minister Dominic LeBlanc and Katie Telford, Trudeau’s chief of staff.

The threatened tariffs would affect large swathes of U.S. trade and are likely to raise prices for a variety of goods for consumers. The largest U.S. imports of Canadian goods include oil and gas, machinery and parts. Anticipating trade policies that would harm the country’s interests, Canada sent senior government officials to meetings in the United States ahead of November’s election to avert a turn toward protectionism.

Hours before his trip to Florida, Trudeau told reporters that the tariffs would hurt consumers.

“It’s really important to understand that when Donald Trump makes statements like this, he intends to put them into action. There is no doubt about it,” Trudeau told reporters on Prince Edward Island in Atlantic Canada.

“Our responsibility is to point out that in doing so he would actually be harming not just the Canadians who work so well with the United States; “It would actually also raise prices for American citizens and harm American industries and businesses,” he added.

During his first presidential campaign, Trump criticized the 1994 North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) and replaced it with the United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement (USMCA), which came into force in 2020. Trump publicly welcomed the new agreement several times, boasting that it was a vast improvement over the original trade deal. Under the USMCA, goods moving between the three North American countries cross borders duty-free.

Trudeau had a tense relationship with Trump at times during his first term in the White House, particularly when it came to trade matters. Trump’s insults toward the Canadian leader sometimes became personal, but the two countries maintained close ties.

Trump also spoke by phone with Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum on Wednesday after the tariff threat, but the two described completely different versions of events.

Trump claimed that Sheinbaum had agreed to “stop migration through Mexico,” and the Mexican president responded by saying, “Mexico’s position is not to close borders, but to build bridges.”

On Thursday, Sheinbaum said she and Trump agreed in a phone call that their countries would have a “good relationship,” and she rejected his threat to impose a 25 percent tariff on Mexico’s exports if it would stop the influx of Migrants and fentanyl would not be stopped from entering the United States.

“There will be no potential tariff war,” Sheinbaum told reporters in her daily news conference.

The tariff threats come at a time when encounters with migrants at the U.S.-Mexico border have declined. The US Border Patrol registered significantly fewer migrants crossing the border illegally from Mexico in the 2024 fiscal year than in the previous two years. At the border with Canada, the numbers are significantly lower, but have increased.

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• Hannah Knowles, Mary Beth Sheridan, Amanda Coletta and Niha Masih contributed.