Kremlin brushes off Trump tariff threat to BRICS, says no plan for common currency

MOSCOW: The Kremlin on Friday brushed off a repeat threat by US President Donald Trump to impose tariffs on the BRICS grouping of countries if it created its own currency, saying there was no such plan.

Trump on Thursday warned off BRICS member countries from replacing the US dollar as a reserve currency by repeating a threat of 100 per cent tariffs he had made weeks after winning the November presidential election.

But Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov said BRICS, of which Russia is a member, was not talking about setting up its own currency, but merely about creating joint investment platforms.

“This is not the first time Trump has made such statements, it’s not new. There have been statements like this before, back when he was just president-elect. So now, in fact, he has repeated his old thesis,” Peskov told reporters.

“We should probably recall the words of our president (Vladimir Putin), which are much more important and meaningful for us after all. The point is that BRICS is not talking about creating a common currency, nor has it ever done so. BRICS is talking about creating new joint investment platforms that would allow joint investments in third countries, mutual investments and so on,” said Peskov.

“In all likelihood, US experts probably need to explain the BRICS agenda in more detail to Mr Trump,” he added. The Kremlin in December said any US attempt to compel countries to use the dollar would backfire, after Trump made the same threat against BRICS.

India, another BRICS member and one that has been forced to use a variety of currencies to buy Russian oil due to Western sanctions on Moscow, also played down Trump’s threat.

“BRICS takes decisions by consensus,” Indian Foreign Ministry spokesperson Randhir Jaiswal told reporters on Friday. “As far as the dollar is concerned, the question of de-dollarisation, our foreign minister has clearly said that we don’t have such a policy or such a strategy.”

The US is India’s largest trade partner, according to Indian Foreign Minister Subrahmanyam Jaishankar. New Delhi and Washington are in talks to schedule an early visit of Prime Minister Narendra Modi to the US to hold talks with Trump. The BRIC grouping initially included Brazil, Russia, India and China, but has since expanded to take in other countries.

The grouping does not have a common currency, but long-running discussions on doing more business in national currencies have gained momentum after the West imposed sanctions on Russia over the war in Ukraine.