So, while Trump has been busy doing his usual bit - alienating allies, threatening NATO, and basically gaslighting every country on the planet - BRICS has been busy too. In 2024 and early 2025, it went from a five-country side project to a ten-member economic monster that now includes Egypt, Ethiopia, Iran, the UAE, and Indonesia. Nearly half the world’s population is now hanging out in a club that actually wants more friends - while the U.S. keeps flipping everyone off.
BRICS is an economic and political alliance originally formed in 2009 by Brazil, Russia, India, and China, with South Africa joining in 2010. It was created as a counterweight to Western-dominated institutions like the IMF and World Bank. The group focuses on trade, investment, and creating alternatives to U.S.-led financial systems.
BRICS now accounts for around 40 percent of global GDP (PPP) and is stacked with top exporters of oil, gas, food, and minerals. While Trump is out here saying NATO allies don’t deserve protection unless they cough up more cash, 44 countries are literally asking BRICS for an invite.
The big swing came at their Rio summit, where BRICS kept pushing its own cross-border payments system - a possible alternative to SWIFT, the main system for international payments. Russia’s already got tech to tie it together.
Translation: a fast track for de-dollarization. Considering nearly 90 percent of currency trades still touch the dollar, Washington should maybe quit chest-thumping long enough to notice the ground shifting.
Trump’s counter-move was peak subtlety: threatening 100 percent tariffs on any country that dares to try a BRICS currency. Because nothing screams “global leadership” like mafia-style economic threats. And BRICS, of course, plays it cool, insisting they’re not anti-West - just non-West.
The U.S. could have managed this. Instead, Trump treated allies like punching bags, waged trade wars that jacked up prices at home, and gutted NATO credibility. Now BRICS is creeping toward a post-American system while the U.S.
The dollar still rules - for now. But every tantrum, tariff, and NATO threat is basically a BRICS recruitment ad. Trump didn’t just alienate our allies. He helped build a coalition of countries who would love to see the US be toppled.
Correction, September 28th, 2026: This essay first said BRICS grew from five members to ten while Trump was busy alienating allies - that growth came in 2024 and early 2025, before his second term began, so the title changed too. It also said BRICS greenlit an alternative to SWIFT at its Rio summit - leaders there only kept talks on a cross-border payments system going.
Update, September 28th, 2026: A few lines now give tighter figures for BRICS’s share of world output and the dollar’s share of currency trades, and use the words BRICS leaders actually use about the West.