Trump’s threat of new tariffs on any nation supporting the “anti-American policies” of BRICS countries on Sunday injects fresh instability and uncertainty into the president’s global tariff campaign, as the July 9 deadline for “reciprocal” tariff negotiations approaches.
Some BRICS countries have been negotiating directly with the Trump administration, in particular India. It’s unclear if Trump’s new threat would impact those talks.
Trump earlier this year threatened to place a “100% tariff” on “seemingly hostile” member countries if they supported a shared currency. The idea of a BRICS currency was floated by Brazil’s President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva in 2023, but has not been a focus of the body, which rather seeks to bolster trade and financing in their local currencies.
On Sunday, the group of BRICS leaders backed ongoing discussions of a cross-border payments initiative between member countries.BRICS countries also condemned the military strikes on member state Iran and expressed “serious concern” over “deliberate attacks on civilian infrastructure” and “peaceful” nuclear facilities, without naming Israel, which carried out days of strikes against Iran last month, or the US, which bombed three Iranian nuclear facilities as part of the same onslaught.
When asked about Trump’s latest comments at a regular media briefing Monday, a spokesperson for China’s Foreign Ministry called BRICS an “important platform for cooperation among emerging markets and developing countries,” which “avoids bloc confrontation or targeting any specific country.”
“We consistently oppose tariff wars and trade wars, as well as using tariffs as a tool for coercion and pressure. Arbitrarily increasing tariffs does not serve the interests of any party,” spokesperson Mao Ning said, in response to a question about how China would react if additional tariffs were imposed on it over BRICS. Economists have warned that Trump’s trade war, especially the wide-ranging tariffs on Chinese imports, will increase costs for consumers. Some companies, including Walmart, have said they will raise prices for customers despite pushback from Trump.
“We have seen no inflation so far,” Bessent said on “Fox News Sunday,” calling such projections “misinformation” and “tariff derangement syndrome.” Bessent and other Trump officials have repeatedly argued in recent months that countries like China would bear the cost of tariffs.
US wholesale inflation rose slightly in May, driven in part by costlier goods, though tariff-related effects were largely muted. The Producer Price Index, a closely watched measurement of wholesale inflation, showed that prices paid to producers rose 0.1% in May, lifting the annual rate to 2.6%, according to Bureau of Labor Statistics data released in June.
Former Treasury Secretary Larry Summers, who has blasted Bessent for undermining the economic impact of tariffs, said Sunday on ABC’s “This Week” that tariffs “will probably collect some revenue” but would come at the expense of higher inflation and less competitiveness for American producers.
Also appearing on “This Week,” Stephen Miran, chairman of the White House Council of Economic Advisers, said there was no “lasting evidence” that tariffs imposed on China during Trump’s first term hurt the economy and the administration has only “repeated the same performance” this year.