At the White House July 18, President Donald Trump let loose in a barrage against the BRICS, reflecting a state of panic over the status of the dollar. He said that the BRICS “wanted to try and take over the dollar, the dominance of the dollar.” Using the word “tariff” as a verb, he recounted his previous threat: “And I said, anybody that’s in the BRICS consortium of nations, we’re going to tariff you 10%.” Then he explained: “The reserve currency is so important. You know, if we lost that, that would be like losing a World War.”
Apparently, Trump had been briefed that the BRICS meeting in Rio de Janeiro was a flop. He claimed that his threat to impose 10% tariffs on imports from the BRICS had derailed their devious plan: “They had a meeting the following day and almost nobody showed up…. If they ever really form in a meaningful way, it will end very quickly.”
Today, Russia’s Deputy Foreign Minister Sergey Ryabkov responded, as reported by TASS: “No one in the BRICS community is raising the issue of replacing the dollar.” Then he explained: “Russian President Vladimir Putin has repeatedly said that over the past few years we have wound up in a situation where the Russian Federation has been deprived of the opportunity to use the dollar, by and large, for very many payments due to sanctions that block that.
