The Developing World's G-7 Would Like a Word

Brics members don't want to be dominated by its most powerful member, China, even if US tariff policy is unpopular.

- Mihir Sharma

It likes to think of itself as the developing world's equivalent of the Group of Seven. Yet unlike the G-7, the Brics bloc—designed for Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa but now expanded to 11 members—has sharply diverging interests.

It includes energy exporters like Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, as well as importers like India; material-hungry manufacturing giants like China and commodity superpowers like Brazil; moderate democracies like Indonesia and extremist theocracies like Iran.

If there's one thing that almost all of them have in common, however, it's that they want to ensure the grouping's most powerful member, China, doesn't dominate.

Beijing might want to use its influence over global trade to increase the use of the yuan, but India has made it clear that replacing the US dollar as the global reserve currency isn't part of the Brics mandate. Some of the newer members, such as the UAE, are close US allies. Of course, US policy isn't universally popular, either. When is it ever?

At the Brics meeting this week in Brazil, leaders jointly condemned the "indiscriminate" raising of tariffs, in a swipe at US President Donald Trump's trade policy. But Mr. Trump was not criticized half as harshly as the Europeans were: Their carbon border taxes were described as "unilateral, punitive, and discriminatory protectionist measures that are not in line with international law."