BRICS

An attempt, particularly in the 2000s - 2015s to strengthen trade ties between Brazil, Russia, India, China and SouthAfrica.

As a way of banding together to avoid exploitation from the United States and Europe.

In the late 2000s and 2010s seemed to have stalled.

• After 2008Crash money flowed to BRICS by international investors who thought that the West was bust. But Obama's stimulus policies propped up the US economy and convinced investors to bring money back to the dollar / US economy.
• RightWingPopulism in Brazil and India preferred to align more with the West than pursue independence. Particularly with the US under DonaldTrump
• On the other China got so big that BRICS is less a partnership of equals than a Chinese dominated block.

In the 2020s though, BRICS are back through a more complex story

• The Democrats are in power in the US again, so
  • JoeBiden is breaking with support for right-wing world-leaders on CultureWar issues and they, in turn, don't like him much.
  • And American Right Wing Populism is determined to talk him and the US economy down, and are promoting stories of economic crisis, while broadcasting stories of BRICS success
  • The left (who are also not much fans of Biden, for a variety of reasons, many good), also celebrate the successes of BRICS
• The whole new political configuration around the RussianInvasionOfUkraine2022, and particularly the West's attempts to sanction Russia and lock it out of the world financial system as punishment.
  • Russia has turned to BRICS for new trade deals, alliances and markets, eg. RussiaIndiaAlliance2022
• LulaDaSilva who was a great believer in BRICS as a counter-weight to the US is back in power in Brazil and pushing to build an anti-US block.
  • This is despite the fact that Lula is left-wing, while at least India (and I argue Russia) have right-wing populist leaders. (China is a bit sui generis)
  • Brazil to get China's help in bootstrapping its own semi-conductor industry: https://www.reuters.com/technology/lula-seek-chinese-semiconductor-technology-investment-beijing-2023-03-24
• One way this is happening is that DilmaRousseff is now head of BRICS Bank, and leading the charge of DeDollarization via it.

SeekingSimilarStatus was a discussion about the search for "equal sized" trading partners. Of course, now more other smaller countries / economies are "joining BRICS" (whatever that means in practice), and inevitably BRICS is going to be weighted with China, the largest economy, on top.

https://policytensor.substack.com/p/the-geometry-of-fear-in-eurasia?s=r