BRICS declares the South is done begging

Express Tribune

4 days ago

As the world frays under trade wars, resource conflicts and the US credibility unravels under the weight of its own aggressive exceptionalism, BRICS declared that the emperor has no clothes and the Global South was done waiting for crumbs from imperial banquet tables.
Held under the shadow of US belligerence and amid fresh wounds inflicted by wars equipped and backed by the West, the bloc's latest summit took on the air of a reawakened Non-Aligned Movement, with Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva asserting the Washington must stop 'behaving like an empire and 'begin respecting the sovereignty of others'.
His response came in response to US Donald Trump's renewed tariff theatrics in the wake of the bloc's asserting of its sovereignty.
The alliance's leaders reaffirmed their commitment to multilateralism, sovereign equality and a restructuring of global governance to reflect a 'new multipolar reality.'
In a joint declaration the bloc warned that rising protectionism threatened global trade and called for reforms of institutions like the UN Security Council and the IMF so they better reflect emerging economies.
The declaration was unusually muscular and named the reality of Gaza as a 'war of aggression' and condemned tactics such as starvation sieges that even NATO countries tiptoe around.
Furthermore, it strongly backed Palestinian self-determination and expressing 'grave concern' over Israel's Gaza war and reiterating support for a Palestinian state within 1967 borders. The declaration also denounced the US–Israeli bombing of Iran's nuclear sites as a 'violation of international law'.
Blasting trade wars, the communique took aim at 'unilateral tariff…barriers' that 'flout WTO regulations'. One major theme at Rio was financial autonomy.
Rio's leaders agreed to build out practical infrastructure for cross-border payments in local currencies and endorsed a BRICS Cross-Border Payments Initiative – an alternative to SWIFT – to make trade faster and safer within the bloc.
The system, spearheaded by the New Development Bank (NDB), aims to interconnect national payment platforms so that goods can be settled directly in, say, rupees for goods from Brazil, or yuans for contracts with China.
Climate justice and the Green South
Climate change was another urgent focus, especially with Brazil hosting the upcoming COP30 climate conference. The BRICS ministers used Rio to outline a 'climate geopolitics' agenda grounded in justice and development. They insisted that environmental policy cannot be separated from social welfare.
Another key demand was massive climate financing. BRICS leaders noted developed countries had pledged US$100 billion per year by 2020, but actual flows remain far below need.
They cited data showing climate finance requirements have soared to about $1.3 trillion (due to worsening impacts), while only a fraction of that is funded.
As Ethiopia's ambassador warned in Rio, the 2030 development goals were way off track, and 'only about 17% of the goals are on track'. His plea was blunt: rich countries caused the bulk of emissions since the Industrial Revolution, yet poor nations bear the worst consequences.
The bloc cast climate change as a development and justice issue, not just an environmental problem. It demands that wealthier nations deliver on past commitments and scale them up dramatically.
Looming behind all the summit talk was a critique of the existing financial order – in essence, an indictment of the Western-led model of capitalism. BRICS leaders and allied thinkers pointed out how that model has pitted developing countries on the losing end of debt, austerity and austerity.
For many in the Global South, today's 'free market' prescriptions have brought crisis after crisis.
Moreover, IMF and World Bank have compounded a 'polycrisis' of hunger, climate, and debt by imposing punitive conditions and surcharges on vulnerable countries.
For example, the IMF's insistence on cutting subsidies or raising interest rates forced Egypt to quadruple bread prices, sparking unrest, even as the IMF simultaneously imposed 'junk fees' (surcharges) that extra-burdened already cash-strapped governments.
The numbers are stark. Debt justice advocates note that over half of the world's poorest countries are now in debt crisis. Since 2013 the number of Global South nations on the verge of default has more than doubled. As of 2022, 54 countries were classified as facing unsustainable debt burdens.
In these countries, interest payments are crowding out everything else, Recent research finds they now spend five times more on repaying creditors than on climate adaptation and resilience. In other words, money that could build hospitals or flood defence is siphoned off to foreign banks and bondholders.
For instance, Pakistan, hit by devastating floods in 2022, was forced to divert billions from reconstruction to service external debt even as development benchmarks languished
Tariffs and limits of coercion
On the other, just as the declaration landed with a thud, US President Donald Trump, in a characteristically forceful social media post on 7 July 2025, declared, 'Any Country aligning themselves with the Anti-American policies of BRICS, will be charged an ADDITIONAL 10% Tariff. There will be no exceptions to this policy. Thank you for your attention to this matter!'
On the same day, Trump dispatched his infamous tariff letters, thinly veiled as diplomatic overtures but steeped in unilateral belligerence as the outlines of a broader geopolitical reordering became visible.
The letters, which rationalised arbitrary tariff hikes under the guise of 'reciprocity,' were less about trade and more about a desperate assertion of imperial prerogative.
However, beneath the surface ran the unmistakable traces of failed coercion, faltering hegemony and the paranoid anxiety that BRICS was no longer merely an acronym, but a nascent counter-power.
The breakdown of negotiations over the preceding three months exposed the fraying limits of American economic statecraft. The old instruments of leverage such as sanctions, tariffs and financial blackmail appeared to have fatigue, not fear.
Trump's pivot from suspension to escalation in the China tariff war revealed a strategic cul-de-sac. Plagued by its own contradictions and upsetting its own allies, the administration alienated long-time partners while inadvertently catalysing an emerging geopolitical bloc rooted in the shared experience of imperial exclusion.
The BRICS summit in Brazil unfolded against this backdrop. No longer the butt of Western punditry, the bloc has matured into a platform with infrastructural and political density. Ten full members, dozens of interested observers, and over fifty states engaged in formal and informal dialogue suggest a layered institutional emergence, rather than mere rhetorical alignment.
Measured by purchasing power, BRICS economies account for nearly half of global GDP and over half of the global population. Their economic trajectories increasingly set the pace for global growth.
The states also command vast shares of industrial production, energy reserves, agricultural capacity and critical minerals, locating them within the core of the material reproduction processes on which global stability depends.
As the financial capital in the West remains long decoupled from productive investment, BRICS economies remain anchored in physical output and strategic sectors, grounded in systemic exchange value and deriving strength from infrastructure, energy and commodities rather than speculative cycles.
The key difference is that energy in these economies is not a volatile asset class, but a prerequisite for sovereign development.
Russia, Iran, Brazil, the UAE and Saudi Arabia dominate fossil fuel markets, while China leads in renewables and storage technologies.
These capacities form the base of coordinated state-led planning. Unlike the credit-driven economies of the North Atlantic, where returns are chased through stock buybacks and asset bubbles, BRICS states engage in long-term provisioning.
Economic derangement
In the United States, financialisation has advanced to the point of economic derangement. Productive sectors have been hollowed out. Industrial investment lags behind speculative flows. Shareholder returns dictate policy.
Decades of offshoring and deindustrialisation have produced sharp internal polarisation: real wages stagnate, infrastructure decays, and essential services become unaffordable for large sections of the population.
On the global stage, the dollar functions less as a stabilising currency than as a mechanism of control. Washington's reliance on financial warfare – via sanctions, reserve freezes, and regulatory overreach –has exposed the fragility of this model.
As volatility is offloaded onto the Global South, states have begun to seek institutional and monetary alternatives. However, the desire to delink is not ideological but comes from the structural asymmetries imposed by dollar dependency.
Meanwhile, Europe grapples with its own, increasingly intertwined crises. The break from Russian energy has frayed the continent's industrial core.
Politically, Europe appears unmoored. It invokes strategic autonomy while subordinating security policy to NATO. It speaks the language of multilateralism while confiscating foreign assets, invoking liberal peace while escalating militarisation and even remains silent as genocide and economic exploitations wreak havoc with its leadership staggeringly beholden to the US security umbrella.
However, analysts note this is not a tactical misstep but a deeper crisis of orientation, with competing imperatives pulling the project apart.
The intensification of Western hostility toward BRICS must be situated within this broader geopolitical fatigue. The confrontations are not limited to foreign policy disputes but reflect a deeper structural unease.
Russia's assertion of resource sovereignty, Iran's defiance of financial blackmail and China's infrastructural ascendancy all constitute affronts to a global order increasingly unable to reproduce itself on its own terms.
States that refuse to act as auxiliaries are subjected to diplomatic pressure and narrative containment. The postwar liberal consensus and its unipolar afterglow are no longer capable of securing ideological consent.
Inflation, ecological crisis, inequality, and institutional fragmentation are not imported shocks; they are endogenous to the prevailing model.
The externalisation of blame through sanctions and military build-ups only hastens systemic fragmentation.
The BRICS configuration does not emerge from vacuum. It arises from decades of structural adjustment, resource plunder and financial dependency. Its institutional evolution – through the NDB, cross-border payment systems and currency swaps – offers both protective infrastructure and a set of alternatives.
Similarly, local currency trade, infrastructure investment without neoliberal conditionalities and policy coordination on energy and technology signal a concerted attempt to reclaim developmental sovereignty.
Countries across Africa, Latin America, and Southeast Asia increasingly view BRICS+ as a strategic space to exit from the permanent austerity logic of Bretton Woods institutions.
China, in this configuration, operates not as an imperial centre but as a strategic fulcrum. Its approach remains focused on connectivity, logistics and planning capacity.
However, it is important to steer clear of the old post-Cold War shallow binaries: the 'authoritarian countries' in the BRICS are intending a reversal of globalisation but calling for a redirection.
With their emphasis on real economy coordination, development financing and institutional redundancy, they are preparing for strategic insulation, not isolation.
The bloc reflects a wider historical motion: a world disenchanted with liberal finance and searching for new instruments of survival and cooperation.
The South is no longer a passive recipient in a preordained order. The architecture being assembled across BRICS states is uneven, unfinished and fraught, but undeniably real.
The West can interpret this shift as a threat or a mirror. However, the historical momentum no longer centres on its crises. It centres elsewhere – in the slow, stubborn accumulation of material capacity outside the imperial core.