BRICS adds 6 countries to its embryonic trading alliance
From another story from the South China Morning Post here:
“Brics adds 6: new ‘heavyweights’ boast oil and deep pockets, while others help ‘future-proof’ the bloc, analysts say
Argentina, Egypt, Ethiopia, Iran, Saudi Arabia and the UAE will become full members of the bloc in 2024
Chinese President Xi Jinping hails ‘historic’ expansion, urges group to ‘write a new chapter’ for emerging market cooperation”
BRIC = Brazil, Russia, India and China – total population around 3.25 billion people – 40% of the planet.
No Mexico or Venezuela or Pakistan or easy Asian or west and sub-Saharan African countries – yet!
The six extra countries add another 406 million people lifting the total to around 3.66 billion people and almost 46% of the world’s 8 billion people.
The share of global GDP is a lot less than the almost half of the world’s population. The US has around a quarter of global GDP (down from 40% in 1960) and the EU has around 15%, for a total of 40% of global GDP between them. Adding in the UK, Canada, Australia and Mexico plus others (Switzerland, Norway, Sweden, Mexico etc) lifts the non-BRIC GDP to well in excess of 50%).
What we are witnessing is the turning away of many countries from the clearly corrupt, incompetent and belligerent US and its allies. How this plays out with a switch to a single BRIC+ currency either backed by a single commodity like gold – or a basket of commodities? – or the ballyhoo over central bank digital currency system remains to be seen.
A central bank that performs the same functions as the Fed or the ECB, for the BRIC+ countries would be very interesting – BRIC+ interest rates and a single currency!
For the record, I see the potential for abuse of power of central bank digital currencies (CBDC) but that power exists already – witness the “war powers” used by the communist dictators in Canada to freeze bank accounts and insurance of truckers and their supporters. Pretty much all transactions are “digital” across the developed countries right now. Swipe, swipe of debit and credit cards.
Combine that with the scandals over banning individual customers whose political views don’t align with those of a bank and well.. that situation can easily be extended to supermarkets, utility bills and the internet. Everything is pretty much digital already – all we are witnessing is a channelling of information to another centralizing point. Subject to political and criminal abuse, absolutely – but so is everything else already.
Back to BRIC+
In theory, the sanctions imposed by Resident Biden’s administration on Russia and China means that any country trading with those two (plus other countries subject to even more sanctions) should also be sanctioned.
That’s when the rubber hits the road. It is well known that trade sanctions are an exercise in futility. The US does not ban Russian oil refined and re-exported from China and Saudi Arabia. Neither does it ban Russian agricultural and other products re-exported from India.
Geo-politics is a constantly changing issue – small changes can have significant impacts. The transition from a respected world leader backed with unrivalled military might has been replaced with an image of a disreputable and untrustworthy country in relative decline run by freaks and weirdos with nukes.
Elections have consequences, stolen elections have bad ones.
Onwards!
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well said.