BRICS nations voice 'serious concerns' over Trump tariffs
(You can now subscribe to our
(You can now subscribe to our Economic Times WhatsApp channel
BRICS leaders meeting in Rio de Janeiro on Sunday are expected to decry US President Donald Trump's "indiscriminate" trade tariffs, saying they are illegal and risk hurting the global economy.Emerging nations, which represent about half the world's population and 40 percent of global economic output, have united over "serious concerns" about US import tariffs, according to a draft summit statement obtained by AFP on Saturday.Since coming to office in January, Trump has threatened allies and rivals alike with a slew of punitive duties.His latest salvo comes in the form of letters informing trading partners of new tariff rates that will soon enter into force.The draft summit declaration does not mention the United States or its president by name, and could yet be amended by leaders gathering for talks Sunday and Monday.But it is a clear political shot directed at Washington from 11 emerging nations, including Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa."We voice serious concerns about the rise of unilateral tariff and non-tariff measures which distort trade and are inconsistent with WTO (World Trade Organization) rules," the draft text says.It warns that such measures "threaten to further reduce global trade" and are "affecting the prospects for global economic development."- Xi no show -Conceived two decades ago as a forum for fast-growing economies, the BRICS have come to be seen as a Chinese-driven counterbalance to Western power.But the summit's political punch will be depleted by the absence of China's Xi Jinping, who is skipping the annual meeting for the first time in his 12 years as president.That absence has prompted fevered speculation in some quarters."The simplest explanation may hold the most explanatory power. Xi recently hosted Lula in Beijing," said Ryan Hass, a former China director at the US National Security Council who is now with the Brookings Institution think tank.The Chinese leader will not be the only notable absentee. War crime-indicted Russian President Vladimir Putin is also opting to stay away, but will participate via video link, according to the Kremlin.Hass said Putin's non-attendance and the fact that Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi will be a guest of honor in Brazil could also be factors in Xi's absence."Xi does not want to appear upstaged by Modi," who will receive a state lunch, he said."I expect Xi's decision to delegate attendance to Premier Li (Qiang) rests amidst these factors."Still, the Xi no-show is a blow to host President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva , who wants Brazil to play a bigger role on the world stage.In the year to November 2025, Brazil will have hosted a G20 summit, a BRICS summit, and COP30 international climate talks, all before heading into fiercely contested presidential elections next year, in which he is expected to run.Lula warmly welcomed leaders and dignitaries on Saturday, including China's Premier Li Qiang, as the leftist president hosted a pre-summit business forum in Rio."Faced with the resurgence of protectionism , it is up to emerging countries to defend the multilateral trade regime and reform the international financial architecture," Lula told the event.Iran's President Masoud Pezeshkian, whose nation is still reeling from a 12-day conflict with Israel, is also skipping the meeting and will be represented by Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi.A source familiar with the negotiations said Iran had sought a tougher condemnation of Israel and the United States over their recent bombing of Iranian military, nuclear and other sites.But one diplomatic source said the text would give the "same message" that BRICS delivered last month.Then Iran's allies expressed "grave concern" about strikes against Iran, but did not explicitly mention Israel or the United States.Artificial intelligence and health will also be on the agenda at the summit.Original members of the bloc Brazil, Russia, India, and China have been joined by South Africa and, more recently, Saudi Arabia, Iran, the United Arab Emirates, Egypt, Ethiopia and Indonesia.
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
Indian Express
17 minutes ago
- Indian Express
Express View: For India, is BRICS worth it?
The 2025 BRICS Summit in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil ended over the weekend with a wide-ranging declaration on global and regional issues. But few outside the hapless desk officers in various foreign offices around the world and policy wonks in think tanks would want to pore over the 126-paragraph, 47-page, over-16,000-word declaration. With such familiar phrases as 'multipolar world', 'Global South', 'inclusive', 'sustainable' and 'global governance', it will certainly impress the enthusiasts who see BRICS as a powerful instrument to upend the global order. Many in the West do fear BRICS for the same reason. There is no reason to believe that US President Donald Trump would have had the time to read the long declaration, but he has repeated his earlier claim that BRICS is 'anti-American' and threatened to impose additional tariffs on members of the forum. But the hopes and fears of BRICS engineering a global transformation are misplaced. For, the forum is riddled with several contradictions of its own and its grasp has always been larger than its reach. As irony would have it, if anyone is trying to build a 'post-American order', it is Trump. In less than six months, he has overturned many traditional assumptions about US global policies and is seeking to radically overhaul the international system that Washington built after World War II and that was modified by it at the turn of the 1990s. Consider, for example, the BRICS talk about reforming the Bretton Woods system; Trump is doing precisely that by pressing for change at the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund. The BRICS call to save the World Trade Organisation is a sad (and hypocritical) cry in the wilderness with Trump well on his way to demolishing the rule-maker for world commerce. Even more damaging is that leading members of BRICS have been queuing up in Washington to negotiate bilateral deals with Trump holding a gun to their heads. They are not saving the WTO but protecting their own national trade with America by looking for bilateral deals. China has cut a limited deal. Vietnam, another communist country, announced a trade deal of its own. India hopes that its intensive trade negotiations with Trump's Washington in the past few months will bear fruit this week. Equally far-fetched is the idea that members of BRICS can submerge their bilateral differences to collectively blunt American dominance. For India, the economic and security challenges presented by China are much bigger than those posed by American hegemony. Two BRICS states — Saudi Arabia and the UAE — are as worried as Israel and the US about the nuclear weapons programme of a third member, Iran. But here is the rub. Trump's actions to overhaul the global economic, financial, and security order have produced great global churn. The Rio declaration has no answers, only hot air, in response to the Trump challenge. The circumstances that persuaded India to found BRICS and promote it for three decades are no longer present. Yet the political groupthink in Delhi is so entrenched that no questions are asked about the virtue of India investing so much political and diplomatic capital in a forum that does little to serve the country's current interests. With India taking over the chair of BRICS, the time to ask those questions is now.
The Hindu
21 minutes ago
- The Hindu
Ship attacked in the Red Sea after a bulk carrier sinking claimed by Yemen's Houthi rebels
A Liberian-flagged cargo ship came under fire on Monday (July 6, 2025) in the Red Sea, with two security guards on board reportedly hurt and two others missing in an assault that came after Yemen's Houthi rebels purportedly sunk another vessel in a similar attack. Earlier, the Houthis said they attacked Greek-owned bulk carrier Magic Seas, also Liberian-flagged, with drones, missiles, rocket-propelled grenades and small arms fire on Sunday, forcing its crew of 22 to abandon the vessel. The two attacks and a round of Israeli airstrikes early Monday targeting the rebels raised fears of a renewed Houthi campaign against shipping that could again draw in U.S. and Western forces to the area, particularly after U.S. President Donald Trump's administration targeted the rebels in a major airstrike campaign. The attacks come at a sensitive moment in the Middle East, as a possible ceasefire in the Israel-Hamas war hangs in the balance, and as Iran weighs whether to restart negotiations over its nuclear program following American airstrikes targeting its most sensitive atomic sites during an Israeli war against the Islamic Republic in June. Also, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is meeting with Mr. Trump on Monday at the White House. The private security firm Ambrey reported the latest attack on Monday night in the Red Sea, offering the details on the two hurt and two missing security guards. It said the vessel had been heading north toward the Suez Canal when it came under fire by men in small boats and by bomb-carrying drones. The security guards on board had opened fire in the attack. 'The vessel's engines had reportedly been disabled and Ambrey observed that the vessel had started to drift,' the firm said. There were no other immediate details on the attack, which also was acknowledged by the British military's United Kingdom Maritime Trade Operations, or UKMTO, center. The Houthis' al-Masirah satellite news channel noted the attack, but the rebels didn't claim the assault. However, Moammar al-Eryani, the information minister with Yemen's internationally recognized government that opposes the Houthis and is based in southern Yemen, said the rebels had also carried out the second attack. The Houthis control the northern half of Yemen and its capital, Sanaa. The U.S. military's Central Command said it was aware of reports of the attack, but declined to comment further. Sunday's attack on the Magic Seas, another bulk carrier heading north to Egypt's Suez Canal, happened about 100 kilometers (60 miles) southwest of the port of Hodeida, Yemen, which is held by the Houthis. That's the same area of the attack Monday night. The UKMTO first said that an armed security team on the vessel had returned fire against an initial attack of gunfire and rocket-propelled grenades, though the vessel later was struck by projectiles. The UKMTO said the ship was taking on water and its crew had abandoned the vessel. They were rescued by a passing ship, it added. A European Union anti-piracy patrol in the region, called Operation Atalanta, said that 22 mariners had been on board the Magic Seas. The United Arab Emirates later Monday said that one of its ships from Abu Dhabi Ports received the call to help on the Red Sea and rescued the 22 people aboard the Magic Seas. Brig. Gen. Yahya Saree, the Houthis' military spokesman, claimed Sunday's attack and said the rebels used missiles and bomb-carrying drone boats to attack the ship. 'Our operations continue in targeting the depths of the Israeli entity in occupied Palestine, as well as preventing Israeli maritime navigation in the Red and Arabian Seas ... until the aggression on Gaza stops and the siege on it is lifted,' Saree said. The Magic Seas' owners didn't respond to a request for comment. Saree later said the vessel had sank Monday in the Red Sea. The Israeli military said that it struck Houthi-held ports early Monday at Hodeida, Ras Isa and Salif, as well as the Ras Kanatib power plant. It released footage showing an F-16 launching from Israel for the strike, which came after the Israeli military issued a warning for the area. 'These ports are used by the Houthi terrorist regime to transfer weapons from the Iranian regime, which are employed to carry out terrorist operations against the state of Israel and its allies,' the Israeli military said. The Israeli military also said it struck the Galaxy Leader, a vehicle-carrying vessel that the Houthis seized back in November 2023 when they began their attacks in the Red Sea corridor over the Israel-Hamas war. 'Houthi forces installed a radar system on the ship and have been using it to track vessels in the international maritime arena to facilitate further terrorist activities,' the Israeli military said. The Bahamas-flagged Galaxy Leader was affiliated with an Israeli billionaire. The ship had been operated by a Japanese firm, NYK Line. The Houthis acknowledged the strikes, but offered no damage assessment from the attack. Israel has repeatedly attacked Houthi areas in Yemen, including a naval strike in June. Both Israel and the United States have struck ports in the area in the past — including an American attack that killed 74 people in April — but Israel is now acting alone in attacking the rebels as they continue to fire missiles at Israel. Israeli Defense Minister Israel Katz threatened to launch further strikes. 'What's true for Iran is true for Yemen,' Katz said in a statement. 'Anyone who raises a hand against Israel will have it cut off. The Houthis will continue to pay a heavy price for their actions.' The Houthis then responded with an apparent missile attack on Israel. The Israeli military said that it attempted to intercept the two missiles launched by the Houthis, but they appeared to make impact, though no injuries have been reported. Saree on Monday claimed to launch missiles and drones targeting Israel in its attack. The Houthi rebels have been launching missile and drone attacks against commercial and military ships in the region in what the group's leadership has described as an effort to end Israel's offensive against Hamas in the Gaza Strip. Between November 2023 and January 2025, the Houthis targeted more than 100 merchant vessels with missiles and drones, sinking two of them and killing four sailors. Their campaign has greatly reduced the flow of trade through the Red Sea corridor, which typically sees $1 trillion of goods move through it annually. Shipping through the Red Sea, while still lower than normal, has increased in recent weeks. The Houthis paused attacks until the U.S. launched a broad assault against the rebels in mid-March. That ended weeks later and the Houthis haven't attacked a vessel, though they have continued occasional missile attacks targeting Israel.
Hans India
21 minutes ago
- Hans India
China fumes as Modi greets Dalai Lama on his birthday
Beijing: China on Monday objected to Prime Minister Narendra Modi wishing the Dalai Lama on his 90th birthday and to Indian ministers flocking to his residence in Dharamshala for celebrations, reiterating Beijing's stance on matters concerning Tibet. Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson Mao Ning told reporters that the country's position on Tibet is consistent and well-known. Mao further stated that the Dalai Lama is a political exile and alleged that he has been involved in efforts to separate Xizang -- also known as Tibet outside China -- under the guise of religion. 'India should fully appreciate the great sensitivity of Xizang-related issues and recognise the anti-separatist nature of the 14th Dalai Lama and honour the commitment it made to China on issues related to Xizang,' she said. She also alleged that India is trying to use the Dalai Lama issue to interfere in China's internal affairs and cautioned New Delhi against doing so. The Chinese Embassy in India protested against the Dalai Lama's announcement regarding the continuation of the reincarnation system, asserting that he has no authority to decide whether the institution should continue or be abolished. Prime Minister Modi on Sunday extended warm wishes to the Dalai Lama, and said he has been an enduring symbol of love, compassion, patience and moral discipline. "His message has inspired respect and admiration across all faiths. We pray for his continued good health and long life," Modi posted on X. Union ministers Kiren Rijiju and Rajiv Ranjan Singh, Arunachal Pradesh Chief Minister Pema Khandu, and Sikkim minister Sonam Lama attended his birthday celebrations in Dharamshala.
