Trump is threatening tariffs on a Beijing-backed group. What’s got him so worried?

As US President Donald Trump wages a trade war across the globe, a new target has come into his line of fire: the BRICS group of emerging major economies. Trump in recent days has threatened members of the China- and Russia-backed club with 10% tariffs on goods imported to the US – in addition to heightened tariffs already looming for some of them. “Any country aligning themselves with the Anti-American policies of BRICS” will face those duties with “no exceptions,” Trump wrote on social media Sunday, as leaders from the group met for an annual summit in Rio de Janeiro.

Days later, he went further, suggesting he wants to break up the group. “If they’re a member of BRICS, they are going to have to pay a 10% tariff, just for that one thing – and they won’t be a member long,” Trump said during a cabinet meeting.

Trump’s focus on BRICS comes at a time when the club appears to be ascendant. Eponymous members Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa have since last year expanded their club to include Egypt, Ethiopia, Indonesia, Iran and the United Arab Emirates – and more countries are waiting in the wings for entry. It’s not clear if Saudi Arabia has accepted an invitation to join.

It also turns up the international spotlight on the group, which roughly serves as the Global South’s answer to the US-led Group of Seven (G7) advanced economies, but is often dismissed by experts as comprising nations too politically and ideologically disparate to be effective.

Is BRICS set up to counter the US?

The economic coalition of founding members Brazil, Russia, India and China was launched in 2009 in the wake of the US financial crisis that damaged America’s financial reputation and gave new confidence to emerging markets about their place in the global economy.

The group, which invited South Africa in 2010, is even more of a geopolitical hodgepodge today than it was then, made up of authoritarian nations – both Communist Party-ruled and theological, vibrant, sprawling democracies, and others in between. It includes close partners of the US, like India and the UAE; those that consider the US an enemy, like Iran; and countries that don’t see eye to eye, like India and China. That can blunt the force of BRICS when it makes finding consensus on a range of issues challenging, observers say.