BRICS' pushback against dollar domination sparks global economic standoff

If one were to look for a 'rationale' for the Trump administration's current decision to significantly raise its tariffs on goods and services entering its shores from virtually the rest of the world, then, it is a recent statement by US Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent that one needs to scrutinize. He is quoted as saying that tariffs could return 'to April levels, if countries fail to strike a deal with the US.'

- BY LYNN OCKERSZ

In other words, countries are urged to negotiate better tariff rates with the US without further delay if they are not to be at the receiving end of the threatened new tariff regime and its disquieting conditions. An unemotional approach to the questions at hand is best.

It would be foolish on the part of the rest of the world to dismiss the Trump administration's pronouncements on the tariff question as empty rhetoric. In this crisis there is what may be called a not so veiled invitation to the world to enter into discussions with the US urgently to iron out what the US sees as unfair trade terms. In the process perhaps mutually acceptable terms could be arrived at between the US and those countries with which it is presumably having costly trade deficits. The tariff crisis, therefore, should be approached as a situation that necessitates earnest, rational negotiations between the US and its trading partners for the resolving of outstanding issues.

Meanwhile, the crisis has brought more into the open simmering antagonisms between the US and predominantly Southern groupings, such as the BRICS. While the tariff matter figured with some urgency in the recent BRICS Summit in Brazil, it was all too clear that the biggest powers in the grouping were in an effort 'to take the fight back to the US' on trade, investment and connected issues that go to the heart of the struggle for global predominance between the East and the US. In this connection the term 'West' would need to be avoided currently because the US is no longer in complete agreement with its Western partners on issues of the first magnitude, such as the Middle East, trade tariffs and Ukraine.