Photo taken during the BRICS Summit in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, on July 6, 2025. Photo: Fabio Teixeira/Gettyimages.ru.
US President Donald Trump announced that he will impose a 10% tariff on products from BRICS countries simply because they are members of the bloc.
“BRICS is—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,” the president said Tuesday in a meeting with reporters at the White House.
“Tratan de destruir al dólar”: Trump amenaza a los BRICS
El presidente de EE.UU., Donald Trump, anunció que impondrá un arancel del 10 % a los productos de los países de los BRICS solo por ser miembros del bloque. pic.twitter.com/R5uGZ8s4Bk
According to Trump, a smart US president should never allow the dollar to weaken. “If you have a stupid president like the last one, you would lose the standard,” he said, in an apparent allusion to his predecessor, Joe Biden. “If we lost the world standard dollar, that would be like losing a war, a major world war,” he added.
“The dollar is king,” he warned, “if people want to challenge it, they can, but they’re going to have to pay a big price.”
‘BRICS is not directed against third parties’
Last Sunday, while the 17th BRICS summit was being held in Rio de Janeiro, the White House resident wrote on social media: “Any Country aligning themselves with the Anti-American policies of BRICS will be charged an ADDITIONAL 10% Tariff.” He asserted that “there will be no exceptions to this policy.”
Russian presidential spokesman Dmitry Peskov asserted that “BRICS cooperation has never been and will never be directed against third countries.” He emphasized that the bloc is made up of countries with shared approaches and worldviews.
This isn’t the first time the US president has made threats against the group. In January of this year, Trump declared that the bloc’s countries would face 100% tariffs if they didn’t support the dollar and sought to create a new currency.
