By Ben Norton – Jul 14, 2025
Close Donald Trump allies like Steve Bannon say “the president is pissed every time he looks at the BRICS de-dollarization effort”. The US is trying to make an example out of Brazil, threatening high tariffs to punish Lula da Silva, who promotes a multipolar world and a new global reserve currency.
Western corporate media coverage of the Global South-led organization BRICS is frequently dismissive and condescending. Bloomberg published an article claiming that BRICS is “little more than a meaningless acronym”.
It appears that a lot of this criticism, nevertheless, is actually a coping mechanism, because evidence is piling up showing that the US government is very afraid of the rapid growth of BRICS.
Donald Trump, in particular, is terrified of the possibility of BRICS challenging the global dominance of the US dollar.
BRICS held a successful summit in Brazil in July, featuring for the first time the participation of 10 members and 10 partner countries.
The 2025 BRICS summit in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil
Trump responded with furious denunciation, threatening to hit all BRICS countries with 10% tariffs.
Trump then delivered an angry rant against BRICS at the White House, in a meeting with his cabinet on 8 July.
What the US president said was deeply contradictory. It was like Schrödinger’s BRICS: the organization is not a threat, but also the biggest threat in the world, according to Trump.
Trump simultaneously claimed that BRICS is “not a serious threat”, but also that it is trying to “destroy the dollar”, and that, if the United States lost the exorbitant privilege it receives as the issuer of the global reserve currency, it “would be like losing a war, a major world war; we would not be the same country any longer”.
“The dollar is king, and we’re going to keep it that way!” Trump declared.
These were Trump’s indignant remarks (emphasis added):
They have to pay 10% if they’re in BRICS. Because BRICS was set up to hurt us. BRICS was set up to degenerate our dollar, and take our dollar as the standard, take it off as the standard.
And that’s okay if they want to play that game, but I can play that game, too. So anybody that’s in BRICs is getting a 10% charge.
…
If they’re a member of BRICS, they’re going to have to pay a 10% tariff, just for that one thing. And they won’t be a member long.
I thought BRICS was — you know, I said this about a year ago, and it largely broke up. But, you know, there are a couple of them hanging around, but I thought it largely broke up.
BRICS is not, in my opinion, not a serious threat. But what they’re trying to do is destroy the dollar, so that another country can take over and be the standard. And we’re not going to lose the standard, at any time.
If you have a smart president, you will never lose the standard. If you have a stupid president, like the last one, you would lose the standard. You wouldn’t have the dollar as [the standard].
And if we lost the world standard dollar, that would be like losing a war, a major world war; we would not be the same country any longer. We’re not going to let that happen.
The dollar — you never hear the expression “the dollar is king”? The dollar is king, and we’re going to keep it that way, ok?
Trump is extremely “pissed” at BRICS and dedollarization
Politico published an article, citing sources very close to the US president, that revealed that Trump is enraged about the expansion of BRICS and its push for global dedollarization.
“You can tell the president is pissed every time he looks at the BRICS de-dollarization effort”, former top Trump aide Steve Bannon told Politico.
The success of the BRICS summit in “Rio didn’t help”, Bannon added.
Bannon served as CEO of Trump’s presidential campaign in 2016, and was the White House chief strategist in 2017.
Bannon, who previously worked at major Wall Street investment bank Goldman Sachs, is a far-right demagogue who proudly stated in 2018, “We’re at war with China”.
Similar comments were made by a former State Department official, Leland Lazarus, who served as a special assistant to the commander of Southern Command, which oversees the US military’s operations in Latin America.
Lazarus told Politico that Trump is using tariffs threats on BRICS countries “to try to peel off new members like Egypt, Ethiopia, and Indonesia”.
Lazarus emphasized that Brazil’s closer relations with China, and their mutual moves to dedollarize and trade in their local currencies, “may be triggering alarms within Trump’s circle, especially among advisers who view global dollar supremacy as a pillar of U.S. power”.
Another Trump ally, Mauricio Claver-Carone, who served as the Republican president’s special envoy to Latin America during his first term, told Politico that Trump had already been livid at Brazil’s left-wing President Lula da Silva, but “BRICS tipped the scale”.
Trump attacks Brazil, a key player in the new multipolar world order
The prominent role of Brazil in BRICS, as a major player in the new multipolar global order, has made it a target of US aggression.
Following the Rio de Janeiro summit in July, Trump threatened to impose massive tariffs of 50% on Brazil.
The US president is trying to make an example out of the Latin American nation, to punish Lula for challenging US global hegemony, moving closer to China, challenging the dollar, and promoting BRICS as a multipolar vanguard.
Lula was one of the co-founders of BRICS in 2009 (back when it was BRIC). The Brazilian leftist leader has long advocated for the Global South-led organization to play a more important role in international affairs.
The 2010 summit of BRIC — which expanded that year into BRICS, by adding South Africa
The Brazilian president has strongly supported dedollarization, and has repeatedly called for the creation of a new global reserve currency, to replace the US dollar.
Trump (and Elon Musk) blatantly meddles in Brazil’s internal affairs
Trump is using tariffs as a weapon of economic warfare to meddle in Brazil’s internal political affairs.
The US president’s goal is also to help Brazil’s far-right former president, Jair Bolsonaro, who is a loyal Trump ally.
Donald Trump and Brazil’s far-right leader Jair Bolsonaro gifted each other jerseys at the White House in 2019
Trump hopes his tariffs will hurt the Brazilian economy and damage Lula’s image, to tip the scale in support of the Bolsonarista right as the 2026 election approaches.
To justify this blatant US meddling in Brazil’s internal affairs, Trump absurdly claimed that there is a legal “witch hunt” against Bolsonaro.
In reality, Bolsonaro is facing legal consequences because, after he lost the 2022 election, he tried to carry out a military coup in early 2023, to prevent the democratically elected Lula from assuming the presidency.
Bolsonaro admitted in court that he met with Brazilian military leaders and discussed ways to hold on to power, even after the majority of the people of his country voted against him.
Far-right political figures in the West have thrown their weight behind Bolsonaro.
Another Bolsonaro ally is the world’s richest centibillionaire oligarch, Elon Musk.
Musk despises Lula, not only because the Brazilian president is left wing and wants to significantly increase taxes on the ultra-rich and crack down on tax avoidance, but also because Lula has challenged Musk’s business interests in the massive South American nation.
Musk has used the social media platform Twitter, which is his personal property, to promote anti-Lula and pro-Bolsonaro propaganda.
Both Trump and Musk falsely allege that Lula and the Brazilian government are violating free speech, to justify their political meddling in the Latin American country’s internal affairs, and to support the far-right failed coup leader.
This issue, however, has nothing to do with “free speech”. It is about the Brazilian government’s right to defend its sovereignty and resist flagrant interventionism by the US empire.
US empire violates sovereignty of Brazil (and Latin America as a whole)
There is a very long history of the US government supporting far-right coups d’etat against democratically elected left-wing leaders in Latin America — including Guatemala in 1954, Chile in 1973, Argentina in 1976, Haiti in 1991 and 2004, Honduras in 2009, Venezuela in 2002, 2014, 2017, and 2019, and many, many more.
Following a US-backed far-right coup against Bolivia’s democratically elected socialist President Evo Morales in 2019, Musk declared on Twitter, “We will coup whoever we want! Deal with it”.
The US government has also been involved in numerous putsches in Brazil, going back to an infamous military coup in 1964.
In 2016 and 2018, the US government backed two soft coups, or judicial coups, against Brazil’s President Dilma Rousseff and Lula, both from the left-wing Workers’ Party.
Dilma was impeached on false accusations of “corruption” in a 2016 regime-change operation.
As Brazil’s leader, Dilma had strongly advocated for BRICS, Global South empowerment, good relations with China, and multipolarity — which made her the target of Washington’s wrath.
Today, Dilma is president of the BRICS bank, the New Development Bank, where she has likewise advocated for dedollarization.
Brazil’s left-wing former presidents Dilma Rousseff and Lula da Silva at the BRICS New Development Bank in Shanghai
In the lead-up to Brazil’s presidential election in 2018, Lula was leading in the polls, but he was imprisoned on fake accusations of “corruption”, by US-backed right-wing judges, who essentially installed Bolsonaro as president.
In 2021, the Brazilian supreme court annulled the fake, politically motivated charges of “corruption” against Lula.
The United Nations Human Rights Committee conducted an investigation into the situation in Brazil, led by experts on international law, and concluded in 2022 that the show trial against Lula had been illegitimate and violated his civil rights and due process.
The US government was deeply involved in both of these right-wing political coups in Brazil, in 2016 and 2018. They constitute a textbook case of “lawfare”, or judicial warfare.
This is why Lula himself said, “Everything that is happening has the hand of the United States on it”. He underscored that “the US created the Lava Jato investigation”, in reference to the supposed “anti-corruption” scheme, known as Operation Car Wash, that was cynically used as cover to carry out the coups.
This is also why, in 2025, Lula is pushing back against Donald Trump’s heavy-handed meddling in Brazil’s internal affairs.
In response to Trump’s tariff threats and false accusations that the Brazilian government is carrying out a “witch hunt” against Bolsonaro, Lula stated:
Brazil is a sovereign nation with independent institutions and will not accept any form of tutelage.
The judicial proceedings against those responsible for planning the coup d’état fall exclusively under the jurisdiction of Brazil´s Judicial Branch and, as such, are not subject to any interference or threats that could compromise the independence of national institutions.
Lula likewise pledged to hit back against Trump’s unilateral announcement of 50% tariffs on Brazilian goods with Brazil’s own retaliatory tariffs of 50% on US goods.
“We’re going to have to look for other partners to buy our products. Brazil’s trade with the US represents 1.7% of its GDP”, Lula explained. “It’s not like we can’t survive without the US”.
The Brazilian president noted that the successful BRICS summit “likely worried Trump”, according to a report in Bloomberg. Lula then doubled down on his calls for dedollarization.
“We are interested in creating a trade currency among other countries”, the Brazilian leader stressed. “I’m not obligated to buy dollars to conduct trade with Venezuela, Bolivia, Chile, Sweden, the European Union, or China. We can trade in our own currencies”.
Ben Norton
Benjamin Norton is the founder and editor of the independent news website Multipolarista, where he does original reporting in both English and Spanish. Benjamin has reported from numerous countries, including Venezuela, Nicaragua, Bolivia, Ecuador, Honduras, Colombia, and more. His journalistic work has been published in dozens of media outlets, and he has done interviews on Sky News, Al Jazeera, Democracy Now, El Financiero Bloomberg, Al Mayadeen teleSUR, RT, TRT World, CGTN, Press TV, HispanTV, Sin Censura, and various TV channels in Mexico, Nicaragua, Venezuela, Ecuador, and Bolivia. Benjamin writes a regular column for Al Mayadeen (in English and Spanish). He was formerly a reporter with the investigative journalism website The Grayzone, and previously produced the political podcast and video show Moderate Rebels. His personal website is BenNorton.com, and he tweets at @BenjaminNorton.
