Trump threatens tariffs on BRICS nations, demanding they use dollar

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President-elect Donald Trump on Saturday demanded that the BRICS nations, a group of nine countries with emerging economies, commit to not creating a new currency or back any other currency to replace the U.S. dollar, threatening to impose punitive duties on their imports if they do not comply.

“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,” Trump wrote in a post on his social media platform, Truth Social, on Saturday. “They can go find another ‘sucker!’ There is no chance that the BRICS will replace the U.S. Dollar in International Trade, and any Country that tries should wave goodbye to America.”

The forum includes Brazil, China, Egypt, Ethiopia, India, Iran, Russia, South Africa and the United Arab Emirates. The group has a stated purpose of building up an international finance system that is less dependent on the United States and the European Union.

The threat against the BRICS nations came as part of a flurry of trade-related demands issued by Trump from his Truth Social account over the past several days.

On Friday, Trump had dinner with Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau at the president-elect’s Mar-a-Lago Club in Palm Beach, Florida, just days after Trump took to social media warning that he was ready to impose sweeping tariffs on Canadian, Mexican and Chinese goods on his first day in office.

The president-elect has said the threatened tariffs, which include a 25 percent tariff on Mexican and Canadian goods as well as an additional 10 percent on Chinese merchandise, would be aimed at halting an “invasion” of drugs and migrants into the United States.

The term BRICS was coined by a Goldman Sachs economist nearly 25 years ago to describe the large, fast-growing economies of Brazil, Russia, India and China.

Russia in particular has driven discussions about building an alternative global money-transfer system after a group of its banks was cut out of the main global payment system known as SWIFT following Russian President Vladimir Putin’s invasion of Ukraine in 2022. Right now, the U.S. dollar dominates global trade, spurring a constant demand for dollars all over the world that gives the United States influence with other countries.

Trump has previously said he would seek to punish countries that attempt to use currencies other than the dollar for trade. At a campaign rally in September, he said he would levy tariffs of 100 percent on countries that tried to move away from the dollar.

The idea of a BRICS currency has been discussed before, but is far from actually being close to being implemented. Still, in October, Putin walked onstage at the group’s annual summit – held this year in Russia itself – with a mock-up of what a paper money version of the currency could look like.

Trump has repeatedly tried to use trade policy to address unrelated issues, sometimes using threats made via social media as a bargaining tactic.

In May 2019, he announced escalating tariffs against Mexico designed to pressure the Mexican government into stopping Central American migrants from crossing its territory. Trump said he would impose a 5 percent tariff on Mexican goods, which would increase in 5 percent increments each month until the border problem was resolved.

The announcement sparked criticism from business representatives and some Senate Republicans at the time, who called it a misuse of the president’s tariff authority. Little over a week later, Trump lifted the tariff threat, saying that Mexico had agreed to take “strong measures” to curb the influx. That same year, he took to Twitter to accuse China of slow-rolling trade negotiations.

Trump said Saturday afternoon that he had a “very productive meeting” with Trudeau, where they discussed energy, the Arctic, the drug crisis, immigration and “Fair Trade Deals that do not jeopardize American Workers, and the massive Trade Deficit the U.S. has with Canada.”

“I made it very clear that the United States will no longer sit idly by as our Citizens become victims to the scourge of this Drug Epidemic, caused mainly by the Drug Cartels, and Fentanyl pouring in from China,” Trump wrote in a post on his social media platform, Truth Social, adding that Trudeau “has made a commitment to work with us to end this terrible devastation of U.S. Families.”

Trump’s social media posts did not make any promises of what actions he would take after the conversations.

Trudeau told reporters on Saturday morning that he had “an excellent conversation” with Trump during his dinner at Mar-a-Lago, but he walked away from the press when asked if tariffs were brought up. Trudeau posted a message on X on Saturday thanking Trump for the dinner, adding, “I look forward to the work we can do together, again.”

A Canadian government official said the dinner lasted three hours, and that the group discussed fentanyl, border security, NATO, energy and a host of other topics. This person spoke on the condition of anonymity to describe the contents of the private meeting.

Canada is the United States’ largest trading partner and the No. 1 purchaser of U.S. goods, making the relationship between the two countries crucial.

Trump and Trudeau were joined for dinner on Friday night by some of Trump’s Cabinet picks and their spouses. The group included North Dakota Gov. Doug Burgum (R), his choice for interior secretary; transition co-chair Howard Lutnick, Trump’s pick for commerce secretary; and Rep. Michael Waltz (R-Florida), whom Trump tapped for national security adviser. Waltz has frequently criticized Trudeau, particularly on issues related to China.

Sen.-elect Dave McCormick, the Republican who won Pennsylvania’s Senate race, was also in attendance, according to a photo he shared on social media. Trudeau’s entourage, meanwhile, included Canadian Public Safety Minister Dominic LeBlanc and Katie Telford, Trudeau’s chief of staff.

The threatened tariffs would affect large swaths of U.S. trade and are expected to raise prices on a host of goods for consumers. Some of the largest U.S. imports of Canadian goods include oil and gas, machinery and parts. Canada had been anticipating trade policies that would damage the country’s interests, sending top government officials to meetings across the United States ahead of the November election, meant to stave off a turn to protectionism.

Hours before his trip to Florida, Trudeau told reporters that the tariffs would hurt consumers.

“One of the things that’s really important to understand is that Donald Trump, when he makes statements like that, he plans on carrying them out. There’s no question about it,” Trudeau said to reporters in Prince Edward Island in Atlantic Canada.

“Our responsibility is to point out that, in this way, he would be, actually, not just be harming Canadians, who work so well with the United States; he would actually be raising prices for American citizens as well and hurting American industry and businesses,” he added.

Trump criticized the 1994 North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) during his first presidential campaign, replacing it with the United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement (USMCA), which took effect in 2020. Trump publicly hailed the new accord on several occasions, boasting that it represented an enormous improvement over the original trade pact. Under the USMCA, goods moving among the three North American nations cross borders on a duty-free basis.

Trudeau at times had a strained relationship with Trump during his first term in the White House, particularly when it came to matters related to trade. Trump’s insults toward the Canadian leader sometimes got personal, but the two countries maintained strong ties.

Trump also spoke to Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum over the phone on Wednesday following the tariff threat, but the two have described dramatically different versions of what took place.

Trump claimed Sheinbaum had agreed to “stop Migration through Mexico,” and the Mexican president responded by saying that “Mexico’s stance is not to close borders but to build bridges.”

On Thursday, Sheinbaum said she and Trump agreed in a phone call that their countries will have a “good relationship,” and she dismissed his threat to impose a 25 percent tariff on Mexico’s exports if it didn’t stop the flow of migrants and fentanyl to the United States.

“There will not be a potential tariff war,” Sheinbaum told reporters in her daily news conference.

The tariff threats come at a time when migrant encounters at the U.S.-Mexico border have fallen. The U.S. Border Patrol recorded far fewer migrants illegally crossing the border from Mexico in fiscal 2024 than the previous two years. On the border with Canada, numbers are much lower but have gone up.