The statement from Ministry of External Affairs mentioned that Prime Minister Narendra Modi during the bilateral talks with Chinese President Xi Jinping on the sidelines of the 25th SCO summit held at Tianjin, China, extended an invitation to his Chinese counterpart to attend the BRICS summit held in India in 2026. New Delhi has assumed the BRICS chair for the year 2026, which was previously held by Brazil. Meanwhile, President Xi Jinping thanked PM Modi for the invitation and affirmed that Beijing would lend complete support for New Delhi in its BRICS presidency.
India assumes the BRICS presidency at an extremely critical geopolitical juncture, when the world order is ruptured with multiple fissures, especially in the backdrop of US president Donald Trump’s irrational tariffs on India, Brazil and other economies. Trump administration in the United States is also extremely irked about the BRICS coalition and has repeatedly threatened the BRICS economies to impose higher tariffs, if BRICS embraces the path of de-dollarization. For example, lately Trump had threatened that he would impose additional 10% tariffs on those economies who sides with the policies of BRICS and if it goes against the interests of Washington DC.
New Delhi being the current chair of the BRICS has to navigate these geopolitical hiccups and firmly stand as the vocal voice of emerging economies of Asia and the Global South to counter the unreasonable economic imperialism of the United States. Currently, India faces a massive 50% tariffs on its exports to US, which includes 25% additional tariffs for purchasing the Russian oil. Meanwhile, Brazil also faces 50% tariffs from the US administration. Unlike the strategic calmness and well-calculated move of New Delhi, Brazil is considering to retaliate Trump tariffs with additional retaliatory tariffs on US, which might further fuel the trade war.
The coming together of the BRICS coalition under the leadership of India thus might further resonate discomforts in Washington DC. However, a united and strategic firmness of the BRICS partners under the chairmanship of New Delhi, can help to navigate all the challenges and work for the stability, prosperity and development of the Global South and emerging economies.
In the previous Rio Summit of the BRICS and while taking over the presidency from Brazil, Prime Minister Modi exclaimed that in India’s view BRICS stands for Building Resilience and Innovation for Cooperation and Sustainability. He said that New Delhi would give a ‘new form’ to BRICS by upholding the priorities of Global South in the domain of finance, health, climate action, Artificial Intelligence(AI), regional peace and security and other sustainable development goals.
BRIC is a multilateral forum formed in 2009 comprising the emerging economies of Brazil, Russia, India andd China. South Africa was later inducted into the forum in the year 2010. The grouping was formed with the core objective of countering the western dominated groupings and act as a solid voice of the emerging and developing economies and work for the financial, economic, trade, infrastructural and developmental prospects of the Global South and other developing countries.
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