1 of 2 | U.S. President-elect Donald Trump on Saturday warned the BRICS nations they will face a 100% tariff in U.S. domestic markets if they proceed with plans to create a new currency to compete with the dollar. Photo by John G. Mabanglo/EPA-EFE
Nov. 30 (UPI) — President-elect Donald Trump on Saturday warned the BRICS nations they will face a 100% tariff in U.S. domestic markets if they proceed with plans to create a new currency to compete with the dollar.
Writing on his Truth Social social media platform, Trump said the so-called BRICS nations — which include Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa — could “wave goodbye to America” if they advance plans to develop a common currency.
Russian President Vladimir Putin said during the 2023 BRICS summit in Johannesburg that the member countries should work closely to overcome problems standing in the way of creating a common currency to challenge to the U.S. dollar and the Euro.
Any country participating in such a “de-dollarization” effort would be met by a 100% tariff, the president-elect warned.
“The idea that the BRICS Countries are trying to move away from the Dollar while we stand by and watch is OVER,” he wrote.
“We require a commitment from these Countries that they will neither create a new BRICS Currency, nor back any other Currency to replace the mighty U.S. Dollar or, they will face 100% Tariffs, and should expect to say goodbye to selling into the wonderful U.S. Economy,” he added.
The comments continued a string of tariff threats made by the incoming president in recent days. Late Friday, he met with Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau at his Mar-a-Lago estate in Palm Beach, Fla., who traveled there for an unscheduled meeting amid Trump’s promise to impose blanket 25% tariffs on all products from Canada and Mexico unless they do more to stop the flow of illegal drugs such as fentanyl and undocumented migrants into the United States.
Trump also threatened this week that China will face tariff hikes of 10% above any existing tariffs until it stops the flow of precursor chemicals used in the manufacture of fentanyl.
At the 2024 BRICS nations summit in Russia last month, new bloc members Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Egypt, Iran and Ethiopia were in attendance but participants did not explicitly discuss the creation of a new currency.
Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov on Oct. 3 said the talk of a new currency was “premature,” telling reporters in Moscow, “It would be too early to speak about any common currency in the strict sense of this term. The reason is the significant differences in the approaches of our states to regulation of the payment balance, national financial markets, and inflation targets.”
During this year’s presidential campaign, Trump often spoke of the need to keep the U.S. dollar as world’s reserve currency.
“I would not allow countries to go off the dollar because when we lose that standard, that will be like losing a revolutionary war,” Trump told CNBC in March, adding that he “hates” when countries abandon the U.S. currency.