An international grouping of 11 major non-Western economies. Originally included Brazil, Russia, India and China. South Africa joined in 2010. In 2024 Egypt, Ethiopia, Iran and the United Arab Emirates signed up. Indonesia joined in early 2025. Saudi Arabia received an invitation in 2024 but has yet to accept, possibly under American pressure.
Brazil chairs the BRICS in 2025, with a summit in Rio de Janeiro on July 6th-7th. Critics argue that the more China transforms the BRICS into an instrument of its foreign policy, and the more Russia uses it to legitimise its war in Ukraine, the harder it becomes for Brazil to maintain non-alignment.
In 2014 a BRICS development bank was created. The group's summits have long included debates on boosting local currencies in emerging markets at the dollar's expense. After Donald Trump's threat in 2024 to impose a 100% tariff on products from BRICS countries if they launched their own currency, India's foreign minister, Subrahmanyam Jaishankar, emphasised that there were no plans to dethrone the dollar as the world's reserve currency.
Russia and especially China promote other bodies in parallel with BRICS, notably the Shanghai Co-operation Organisation (SCO), a Eurasian security forum. At an SCO summit in September 2025, attended by India, Xi Jinping spoke of the need "to take a clear stand against hegemonism and power politics, and practise true multilateralism".
BRICS members now trade more goods with one another than with America, and the gap is widening. Mr Trump's tariffs have deepened intra-BRICS links: over a dozen countries, including Thailand and Vietnam, have sought partner-country status or applied to join. America buys only a sixth of Indian goods and a seventh of Brazilian exports. Lula da Silva and Narendra Modi discussed closer ties in August 2025, including digital-payments links that could chip away at the dominance of American banks.
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