Trump issues new threat to BRICS
Speaking at the White House on Friday, Trump denounced what he called BRICS' attempts to weaken the dollar. 'They wanted to try and take over the dollar, the dominance of the dollar... And I said, anybody that's in the BRICS consortium of nations, we're going to tariff you 10%.'
Trump stressed that Washington will spare no effort to preserve the dollar's hegemony. 'The reserve currency is so important. You know, if we lost that, that would be like losing a World War.'
Washington 'can never let anyone play games,' Trump said, adding that he has decided to 'hit them [BRICS] very, very hard.' 'If they ever really form in a meaningful way, it will end very quickly,' he said.
Trump also claimed his threat to impose 10% tariffs on imports from the BRICS had completely derailed the group's summit in Rio de Janeiro earlier this month. 'They had a meeting the following day and almost nobody showed up,' he said.
However, the BRICS summit featured broad participation at the highest level. While China's President Xi Jinping was absent from the meeting, his country was represented by Chinese Premier Li Qiang. Russian President Vladimir Putin was also absent, but addressed the summit remotely.
Brazil's President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, India's Prime Minister Narendra Modi, South Africa's President Cyril Ramaphosa and Indonesia's President Prabowo Subianto, as well as leaders from Egypt, Ethiopia, Iran, and the UAE attended in person.
In October, Russia's Finance Minister Anton Siluanov stated that the share of national currencies in trade among BRICS countries has reached 65%, with the share of the dollar and euro plunging below 30%.
Earlier this week, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov explained that BRICS countries are exploring dollar alternatives 'to shield themselves from US arbitrariness.'
However, Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Sergey Ryabkov has said that BRICS has never been meant as a rival to the US, although warning that 'the language of threats and manipulation… is not the way to speak to members of this group.'
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Russia Today
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Zelensky's end goal is in sight, and so is his end
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In that sense, the increasingly sharp public criticism of Zelensky is yet another sign that he has fallen – and remains – out of favor with the American leadership that rules the West. Zelensky's recent actions may well indicate, as Hersh also suspects, that he knows he is in great danger – and not from Russia but his 'friends' in the West. Just over the course of the last two weeks, Zelensky has reshuffled his government and, at the same time, started a devastating campaign against institutions and individuals that have two things in common: the mission to combat corruption and a well-deserved reputation for being particularly open to US influence. Indeed, it is when Zelensky escalated his attacks on the latter that the Financial Times woke up from years of sweet slumber to discover there's something authoritarian about the West's top man in Ukraine. By now, things have only gotten worse: The domestic intelligence – and, of course, repression – service SBU has raided key anti-corruption organizations and made arrests. Simultaneously, Zelensky's absolutely obedient majority in the Ukrainian parliament has passed a law to completely neuter these institutions by putting them under the president's control, which the president then signed rapidly. By now, Ukraine is witnessing widespread protests against Zelensky's attempt to combine maximum greed with unfettered if petty despotism. For the Ukrainian news site – a media rarity, as it has managed to resist the Zelensky regime's aggressive attempts to subdue and streamline it – the SBU raids on the anti-corruption agencies alone were a powerplay, designed to consolidate Zelensky's one-man rule. That is correct, and he wasn't even done. 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