https://www.bostonglobe.com/2025/07/16/opinion/brics-lula-trump-mexico-sheinbaum/
Trump’s new list of enemy countries could be a self-fulfilling prophecy
The BRICS coalition of countries is challenging America’s economic dominance. The president’s angry response may drive them closer together.
By Stephen Kinzer – Boston Globe - July 16, 2025
Many countries have enemies, or believe they do. President Trump has chosen a new one. He is gunning for the emerging coalition of independent-minded countries called BRICS.
“Any country aligning themselves with the anti-American policies of BRICS will be charged an additional 10% tariff,” Trump threatened in a social media post. He had previously warned BRICS not to issue its own currency or to “back any other currency to replace the mighty U.S. dollar.”
Not coincidentally, Trump issued his latest threat while BRICS was holding its annual summit, in Brazil. That country’s president, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, known as Lula, quickly shot back.
“The world has changed; we don’t want an emperor,” he said at a press conference. “This is a set of countries that wants to find another way of organizing the world.”
Trump replied by threatening Brazil with a 50 percent tariff if its courts do not drop charges against former president Jair Bolsonaro, who is one of his leading supporters in Latin America. Bolsonaro is charged with offenses stemming from a 2023 riot staged by his supporters in an effort to block certification of Lula’s victory at the polls.
Trump’s threat brought another response from Lula: “Brazil is a sovereign nation with independent institutions that will not accept outside meddling.”
At this month’s summit, leaders of BRICS countries declared that their goal is “reforming and improving global governance by promoting a more just, equitable, agile, effective, efficient, responsive, representative, legitimate, democratic, and accountable international and multilateral system.” In Moscow, a government spokesman insisted that “BRICS has never been, and will never be, directed against any third countries.”
The Kremlin doth protest too much. BRICS wants to change the balance of world power.
Since the United States is at the top of the global food chain, any change would necessarily mean a reduction in American power. Secretary of State Marco Rubio has warned that BRICS members are planning “to do trade in their own currencies and get right around the dollar. They’re creating a secondary economy in the world totally independent of the United States.”
Trump is determined to prevent that. Instead of trying to engage with BRICS, he is treating it as a hostile force.
The bloc Trump is now threatening was founded as BRIC in 2001 by four countries — Brazil, Russia, India, and China — that were seeking to escape from America’s global influence. It was rechristened BRICS after South Africa joined in 2010. Since then, Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Iran, Ethiopia, the United Arab Emirates, and Indonesia have joined. These 11 countries represent about 45 percent of the world’s population and one-third of the global economy.
This burgeoning US-BRICS confrontation is part of a larger one. The central challenge in today’s world could be stated in a single profound question: Can the United States accept a world that it does not dominate? Trump evidently believes it cannot.
Heads of state who gathered for this month’s BRICS summit rejected Trump’s threats. Intimidation from Washington, however, has inevitable effects.
The country with the most difficult decision to make is Mexico. It has expressed interest in joining BRICS, and the Mexican foreign minister attended the recent summit as an “observer.” Mexico’s national consciousness is still scarred by memories of past American invasions and interventions. Yet its economy is deeply integrated with the American economy. A 2020 trade agreement known as USMCA binds the United States, Mexico, and Canada in a close economic partnership that brings benefits to all three countries. If Mexico joins BRICS, Trump might expel it from that partnership, which could severely harm its economy.
Under the 2020 agreement, Mexican goods enjoy priority treatment at US borders. Millions of Mexicans work making components for automobiles and electronic devices that are shipped to American factories. Americans buy vast amounts of Mexican products, from beer to avocados. The United States is Mexico’s largest foreign market. A break is all but inconceivable.
Attorney General Pam Bondi told a congressional hearing last month that the United States considers Mexico a “foreign adversary” along with Iran, Russia, and China. Other officials in the Trump administration have raised the possibility of American military attacks on Mexico to destroy drug laboratories.
Indiscriminate deportation campaigns have also raised anger in Mexico. President Claudia Sheinbaum must balance her people’s natural resentment of the United States against the enormous importance of her country’s cross-border trade. It is Mexico’s central conundrum, eloquently phrased more than a century ago by President Porfirio Díaz: “Poor Mexico, so far from God and so close to the United States!”
Russia’s ambassador to Mexico said he believes the United States “won’t allow” Mexico to join the new bloc. “It is optimal for Mexico to join BRICS, but they are not going to let it happen,” he said. “I am being realistic here; on paper I think it would be great.”
The BRICS coalition does not yet wield the global power its members hope to accumulate. They have arguments among themselves. Rebelling against American power is dangerous. Trump’s threats may slow the rise of BRICS. They could also, however, have the opposite effect.
Trump is angering many countries. Most would like to stay in America’s good graces if possible. The more he torments them, however, the more attractive BRICS will become. It is not yet an “anti-American” bloc. If Trump continues dealing with the world through threats, insults, and tariff demands, however, BRICS could become the enemy he fears.
Stephen Kinzer is a senior fellow at the Watson Institute for International and Public Affairs at Brown University.