The July 6-7 summit of the 11 BRICS nations — first established by Brazil, Russia, India and China in 2009, with South Africa joining in 2011 — was notable for the absence of the presidents of China and Russia, as well as the increasingly divergent interests of the capitalist rulers within the bloc. It was set up to try to challenge Washington’s global political and economic supremacy.
For the first time Chinese President Xi Jinping missed a summit, held this year in Rio de Janeiro, sending his prime minister, Li Qiang, instead. Many BRICS governments are indebted to banks in China. Beijing’s enthusiasm for using the bloc to advance its interests in its conflicts with Washington is waning.
Moscow’s lead role in BRICS is weakened by the draining war that followed Russian President Vladimir Putin’s 2022 invasion of Ukraine. Putin appeared only by video link.
Brazil’s president, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, opened the conference complaining that the world faced “an unparalleled collapse of multilateralism.” But like every other multinational bloc in the world, as the capitalist political and economic crisis deepens, the BRICS alliance is riven by competing national interests.
The bloc claims to speak for greater representation for states in the “Global South,” in the face of Washington’s domination of the International Monetary Fund and other imperialist-run world institutions, and to counter the G7 alliance of the rulers of Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, U.K. and the U.S.
BRICS recently expanded to include the governments of Saudi Arabia, Egypt, United Arab Emirates, Ethiopia, Indonesia and Iran. Its 11 members now account for 40% of the world’s population. But its growing size cannot mask the bloc’s diminishing influence.
Underlying the challenges facing its member states is the unceasing and increasingly violent competition for profits, resources and markets that are built into the imperialist world order. Neither can any single power, nor trading bloc, halt the growing vulnerabilities of capitalism to economic breakdowns, sharpening rivalries and more deadly wars.
These conflicts have accelerated sharply since Moscow’s invasion of Ukraine, and Hamas’ Tehran-backed Oct. 7, 2023, massacre of Jews in Israel.
Balancing between Washington and Beijing
Some BRICS governments are aligned with Washington or try to balance between it on one side and Moscow and Beijing on the other. Tensions continue between the rulers of India and China over repeated military clashes at their Himalayan border, most recently in 2022, as well as their conflicts over spheres of influence across central and southern Asia.
Last year, BRICS nations’ trade was valued at $5 trillion — about 22% of global exports. More countries are lining up for membership, hoping for commercial gains. But most governments in BRICS, as well as those that aspire to join, are dependent on exporting goods and materials to the vast U.S. market and to other more developed capitalist nations.
President Donald Trump is wielding Washington’s weight to try to exploit divisions in the BRICS bloc. As the Rio de Janeiro summit began, he warned that any country aligning with “the anti-American policies of BRICS will be charged an additional 10% tariff,” on top of other protectionist measures he’s issued aimed at boosting U.S. capitalists against their rivals.
BRICS leaders issued a joint statement warning against “the indiscriminate increase of reciprocal tariffs.” The U.S. wasn’t mentioned in the declaration as each BRICS government is trying to cut their own separate trade deals with the Trump administration.
Trump has inveighed against the BRICS bloc for pushing proposals for an alternative currency to challenge the dominance of the U.S. dollar in international trade. At the previous BRICS summit, Putin had proposed this. But this year there were no further steps in that direction. Instead the Rio joint declaration acknowledged the global importance of the U.S. dollar.
The declaration denounced Israel’s defensive war to protect its existence as a refuge for Jews, against both Hamas in Gaza as well as its efforts to prevent the rulers in Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons. The government of Iran is a BRICS member. The bloc condemned Washington’s June 21 bombing of Iran, carried out to advance the U.S. rulers’ own imperialist interests in the Middle East.
The summit’s declaration provided the Putin regime with some political cover for its murderous war on the people of Ukraine. While it called for a ceasefire, it condemned only the recent attacks by Ukrainian forces on Russia’s railway infrastructure. There wasn’t a word about the Moscow regime’s relentless airstrikes targeting civilian centers in Ukraine, let alone any mention of Ukrainian sovereignty. The meeting ended with no substantial new initiative being announced.