BRICS set up to ‘degenerate’ US dollar, its members will have to pay 10% tariff: Trump

US President Donald Trump reiterated his threat of a 10 per cent tariff on products from the BRICS countries, including India and China, saying the bloc was set up to “hurt” the US and “degenerate” the dollar.

 

“They have to pay 10 per cent if they are in BRICS,” he said while talking to reporters at the sixth cabinet meeting at the White House.

 

“And that's okay if they want to play that game, but I can play that game too. So anybody that's in BRICS is getting a 10 per cent charge”.

 

Trump, however, gave no specific date for the BRICS tariff to kick in. His assertion came a day after he pressured 14 trading partners, including South Korea and Japan, with sharply higher tariffs.

 

The President claimed that the BRICS has “largely broken up” but there are a couple who hang around.

 

“BRICS is not, in my opinion, a serious threat. But what they're trying to do is destroy the dollar so that another country can take over and be the standard, and we're not going to lose the standard at any time,” Trump said. 

 

Trump's remarks could inject further instability into a global economy that has been shaken by the tariffs he has imposed or threatened on imports to the world's largest consumer market, Reuters reported.

 

Trump asserted that he would never allow the US to lose the world's standard dollar. 

 

“If we lost the world standard dollar, that would be like losing a war, a major world war; we would not be the same country any longer. We're not going to let that happen...dollar is king, we're going to keep it that way,” he said, adding that those who want to challenge the dollar would have to pay a big price.

 

Trump’s remarks came days after the leaders of the BRICS—Brazil, Russia, India, China, South Africa, Saudi Arabia, Egypt, United Arab Emirates, Ethiopia, Indonesia, and Iran—met in Rio de Janeiro for the 17th BRICS Summit on July 6-7.

 

Leaders at the summit voiced indirect criticism of U.S. military and trade policies. 

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