MercoPress. South Atlantic News Agency

Brazil takes over BRICS rotating presidency

Brazil last chaired the BRICS bloc under Bolsonaro and gave little to no importance to it

Brazil took over Wednesday the rotating presidency of the BRICS bloc which now features at least nine new members. It is the fourth time the South American country has held that position, Agência Brasil noted.

With the motto Strengthening Cooperation in the Global South for More Inclusive and Sustainable Governance, the Brazilian government's challenges include articulating the participation of the new members and continuing to build the payment system with local currencies in trade between countries, replacing the US dollar.

Starting in 2025, at least nine countries joined the group as associate members. Cuba, Bolivia, Indonesia, Belarus, Kazakhstan, Malaysia, Thailand, Uganda, and Uzbekistan.

International law professor Paulo Borba Casella, from the BRICS Study Group (GeBRICS) at the University of São Paulo (USP), told Agência Brasil that one of the challenges for the bloc's presidency was to create a dynamic for the expanded BRICS, an acronym that represented Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa.

“There are more than a hundred working groups in the most diverse areas. It will be necessary to see how Brazil can help make the BRICS work in its new configuration, with ten states and a dozen more associated states. How will it work? Nobody has seen it yet and nobody knows,” he said.

With 13 countries invited to join, Nigeria, Turkey, Algeria, and Vietnam are expected to confirm their participation. The inclusion of new members was defined in October 2024, at the 16th BRICS summit in Kazan, Russia, when the new category of associated members was created. Unlike full members, associate partners can take part in meetings and gatherings but have neither vote nor veto powers, since BRICS decisions are taken by consensus.

Last year, the bloc welcomed Iran, the United Arab Emirates, Egypt, Ethiopia, and Saudi Arabia. Although Saudi Arabia has not signed up to the group, it has taken part in all the meetings, Agência Brasil explained.

The coordinator of the BRICS research group at PUC in Rio de Janeiro, Professor Maria Elena Rodríguez, recalled that the last time Brazil was president of the bloc, the government did not attach much importance to it, which should change this year.

“The previous summit under the Brazilian presidency was under the [Jair] Bolsonaro government and it was totally shy and unimportant. Now, BRICS is much more consolidated. Brazil has to be very prepared and show concrete progress, such as on the issue of negotiations in local currencies. We need to have an agenda that helps to elevate Brazil and the Latin American continent a little within BRICS,” she said.

The initiative to replace the dollar with local currencies has led US President-elect Donald Trump to threaten nations abandoning the US currency with higher tariffs.

USP professor Paulo Borba Casella believes that Trump is unable to impose tariffs on all the BRICS countries without damaging the US economy. “He's playing to the domestic electorate to try to make a point, but it's nonsense because the international system doesn't work only with threats,” he said.

Due to Trump's behavior, Casella believes that forums like BRICS are gaining importance. “It may be the BRICS' vocation to counter a rather petty and crude discourse from the point of view of international relations, like Trump's style,” he added.

BRICS has been used as an alternative platform for dialog and integration of countries dissatisfied with the US-led, dollar-dominated international order. With ten full members, BRICS represents more than 40% of the global population and 37% of the world's GDP by purchasing power, surpassing the economic weight of the G7, which groups the world's most industrialized countries.

Among the group's main demands is a reform in global governance, with an increase in the representation of Asian, African, and Latin American countries in bodies such as the UN Security Council, the World Trade Organization (WTO), and financial institutions such as the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund (IMF).