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Graphic Truth: BRICS economies eclipse the G7
In 2001, a Goldman Sachs economist coined an acronym for the four largest and most promising “emerging market” economies: Brazil, Russia, India, and China became known as the “BRIC” countries.
Five years later, reality imitated art when the countries decided to begin meeting regularly at “BRIC summits,” with the latest occurring in Kazan, Russia, this week. The subsequent inclusion of South Africa upgraded the “s” to a capital letter: the BRICS.
The group, which lacks formal treaties or binding obligations, has always been united more by what it opposes — US dominance of global financial systems — than by what it supports.
After all, it’s a hodgepodge: energy exporters (Brazil and Russia) and importers (China and India), democracies (India and Brazil) and non-democracies (China and Russia), allies (Russia ❤️China) and adversaries (India x China).
But the economic clout of the group is, on paper, formidable. With the addition of Iran, Egypt, Ethiopia, Saudi Arabia, and the United Arab Emirates this year, the BRICS+ economies account for 36% of global GDP – while the G7 group of wealthy democracies amount to just 29%. But, of course, there’s a catch: China and the US each contribute more than half of their respective group’s GDP.
Here’s a look at the economic size, and breakdown, of the BRICS+ and the G7 group it hopes one day to eclipse — not only economically but also geopolitically.
Russian President Vladimir Putin attends a welcoming ceremony for participants of the BRICS Summit in Kazan, Russia October 22, 2024.
Another BRIC in Vladimir Putin’s wall
For an “isolated” world leader with a global arrest warrant to his name, Vladimir Putin is throwing a pretty decent party this week. Russia is hosting a summit of the BRICS+, a loose grouping of Global “South” countries led by Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa.
Dozens of nations are set to attend, and Putin will even receive a personal visit from UN chief António Guterres.
The BRICS backstory: It began life in the 2000s as a Wall Street acronym for the four largest emerging market economies. Reality imitated research in 2006 when their governments actually formed the grouping as a basis for alternatives to Euro-Atlantic geopolitical clout.
South Africa joined in 2009. Egypt, Ethiopia, Iran, Saudi Arabia, Ethiopia, and the UAE came along this year. Together, the BRICS account for about 30% of global GDP, slightly more than the G7.
What does it do? It’s a forum to loosely coordinate agendas among members. It has a small multilateral development bank but no binding treaties or security arrangements.
On the agenda this week: Members will sketch out alternatives to the overwhelmingly dollar-dominated global financial systems that give the US outsized power to shape, and sanction, other countries’ economies. Knocking the greenback off its perch as the most-trusted global currency is no easy task.
But the symbolism matters: Putin is showing the world that two years after invading Ukraine, he’s not all that “isolated” after all, and that there is a large – and growing – group of countries seeking alternatives to US and European power.
What Sinwar's death means for the war in Gaza
Ian Bremmer shares his insights on global politics this week on World In :60.
BRICS Summit: A "new world order" or already a relic of the past?
Neither. It's in Kazan in Russia. So, I mean, the big issue is that the fact that Putin is hosting it hasn't stopped people from showing up, and that says a lot about the state of the non-West. If you're not in the G7, you're still finding ways to work with the Russians, and that's not going to change anytime soon. But it is not an alternative to the G7. It's a large grouping, and they have different political, different economic systems. They want to work with everybody. So we're not heading towards a new Cold War, at least not in terms of the big global architecture.
Is Sinwar's death the beginning of the end of the war in Gaza?
I think it is in terms of Israel's military fighting, because they've killed the leadership, they've blown up the tunnels, they've found the arms caches. I mean, there's not much else for them to do. But I mean, the war from the Palestinian perspective is just beginning. They are utterly devastated. They have no ability to have a future for themselves or their kids, and they are going to be fighting for generations. So right now, it doesn't matter much to Israel because they're massively asymmetrically powerful from a military perspective, but long-term this is not something that we're going to be able to forget about.
Yankees versus Shohei Ohtani, I mean Dodgers. Who's winning?
Well, I mean, that is funny of course, because here in Japan everyone has Ohtani fever. You cannot avoid it everywhere you walk. It is pretty exciting. They are the two teams that I wanted to see in the World Series, and I think it's going to be a fascinating week and a half or whatever it is. And I wish... I mean, I tend to root for the Red Sox, which means not rooting for the Yankees. That means I kind of want the Dodgers to win. But at the end of the day, I love sports because a minute after the game is over, I am no longer super excited. And I wish that could be the way that politics work.
Anyway, be good and I'll talk to you all real soon.
Andrei Belousov, Russia's Defence Minister, attends a meeting with Zhang Youxia, Vice Chairman of China's Central Military Commission, in Beijing, China, in this still image taken from video released on October 15, 2024.
Russia and China put on a brave face in defense meeting
Russian Defense Minister Andrei Belousovmet with China’s top civilian defense official Zhang Youxia on Tuesday in Beijing, where both sides pledged to “continue working closely” to deepen military relations. However, the “no limits” partnership Beijing and Moscow committed to two years ago is proving unworthy of the moniker.
For one, China has proven reluctant to provide Russia with the weapons and shells it wants to wage war in Ukraine. Even Beijing’s more restrained shipments of “dual use” goods — civilian items with military applications like computer chips, machine components, and navigation equipment — has attracted opprobrium from the US and Europe.
But China isn’t just losing leverage with Russia and the US: North Korea has been happy to step in and send Russia approximately half the shells it uses in Ukraine, and even reportedly deploy troops to the battlefield. Beijing isn’t willing to match Pyongyang — or, evidently, rein them in.
All eyes are now on next week’s BRICS summit in Kazan, Russia, where Presidents Xi Jinping and Vladimir Putin will meet. China would like to show a united front at the big international conference, but the expansion of the group’s membership to include Egypt, Ethiopia, Iran, and the United Arab Emirates (and also kinda sorta Saudi Arabia) makes it hard to get on the same page about any given geopolitical issue. We’re watching how they talk about Ukraine next week.
Thailand's newly appointed Foreign Minister Maris Sangiampongsa reacts during a family photo session with new cabinet ministers at the Government House in Bangkok, Thailand, May 7, 2024.
US ally Thailand moves forward with BRICS membership
On Sunday, Thailand said Foreign Minister Maris Sangiampongsa had delivered an official letter to his Russian counterpart, Sergei Lavrov, outlining Bangkok’s intention to join the BRICS alliance, which has gained a reputation as an anti-Western forum in recent years. Thailand holds non-NATO major ally status with the United States, but Maris said it hopes joining the Chinese- and Russian-led group will help it “play a more active role in South-South cooperation.” Things may not come together by the next BRICS summit in October, but Bangkok’s bid is likely to work out.
Is Washington worried? Hardly. For all its ambitions of pushing the dollar out of its dominant trade position and aligning the Global South to mutual political goals, BRICS can’t match actions to rhetoric. The organization doesn’t even have a permanent secretariat to coordinate its activities, and its members often don’t see eye to eye.
Thailand isn’t the first US ally to join (Brazil was), and in January, BRICS expanded to include another major non-NATO ally, Egypt, as well as close US partners Ethiopia, Saudi Arabia, and the UAE.
So what’s the point? The impotence of BRICS makes joining a low-stakes gambit with some potential upside. It might help Thailand curry favor with China, its largest trade partner and most worrying military threat. But, if not, what has Bangkok really lost?
Modi (not Xi) leads G-20 summit
Ian Bremmer's Quick Take: Hi, everybody. Ian Bremmer here and I. Happy post Labor Day to all of you. I'm in London for a very, very brief trip, but I wanted to talk a little bit about the G-20 summit coming up this weekend.
Big news to start, Xi Jinping is not coming. Why not? Lots of speculation, lots of news, lots of ink being spilled except for the fact that people should have known about this a while back. One, the Indian government had been informed at least a month ago that Xi Jinping wasn't planning on attending. And secondly, the Americans have been working on a meeting with Xi Jinping and Biden for months now at APEC in San Francisco in November, and that was widely expected to be the next time the two men would be in the same place at the same time.
Biden is going to the G-20, in other words, Xi Jinping was not. Now, that certainly means it's not a sudden health issue, not a sudden domestic economic crisis or political crisis that stopping him from going. It's a question of how much of this is Chinese irritation at their relationship with India. India's export controls, investment review and screens against China now are frankly stronger than those from the United States against China, not to mention border disputes. And the Chinese trying to limit some of India's influence and roles in multilateral organizations. It's been fairly chippy. I wouldn't say it's overtly hostile, but it's certainly not friendly. And, you know, Xi Jinping might see that he has little interest in turning up at a G-20 that is going to be in India. And is know sort of Modi's great party. Risks antagonizing Modi more, of course, by doing that.
But again, not a decision that was taken recently. Secondly, the fact that Russia is not attending and really can't attend, given Putin and the ICC ruling against him, the fact that the G-20, the one place that you have not been able to get any coordination at this meeting in any of the ministerial is around Ukraine statement. The Chinese have been aligned this time around more with the Russians on this and really don't want to be front and center with Xi Jinping being the holdout facing pressure from the G-20, from all the other countries to get an agreement done. And Modi would certainly be on the other side of that. So would the Americans, frankly, so would all the other attendees. China doesn't want to be seen in that regard as the only country supporting the Russian position. So then you have the issue of China having the BRICS, and that is a group that they've just had some success with a significant expansion to Middle East and North African states. That will happen at the beginning of 2024. It's a meeting that China has a lot more sway over. It is China as by far the largest economy and then the Global South as opposed to the G-20, which is everybody that matters and China certainly not feeling in charge of anything. So in that regard, Xi Jinping has a structural reason to make the G20 less important and make the BRICS summit more important going forward.
I'm particularly interested in how they play that with Russia chairing the BRICS next year and how many of the other BRICS invitees show up at the head of state level. It's going to be, I mean, quite something when you've got, say, the Saudis and the Emiratis and the Brazilians all showing up in Russia for a BRICS summit. I think a lot of them are going to be looking for cover and maybe hoping that one or two say no so that they can say no to. But that's kind of where we are. The G-20 itself should be quite successful. I don't think that it's going to be meaningfully different in terms of Modi's ability to show that he's doing well on the back of Xi not showing up, in part because, of course China's having so many economic challenges at home. While this is really India's year, Modi with very strong popularity inside India, strongest economic growth of any major economy in the world, and moving, driving a more assertive climate policy, a more assertive technology reform policy, and, you know, looking pretty strong in the run up to 2024 India elections.
So at this point, especially with Modi having talked with over 100 leaders in preparation to the G-20 summit and seeing a lot of irritation with the United States on the back of unilateralism, America firstism and questions of where the US is going post 2024. A lot of Belt and Road countries feeling like they're not getting the kind of support they have historically from the Chinese. This is a big opportunity and India with some role to fill and they've historically not wanting to be a big geopolitical player, especially outside of the region, that is changing a lot under Modi.
So we're watching that all weekend and I hope everyone's doing well. Talk to you soon. Bye.
The new BRICS expansion and the Global South agenda
Ian Bremmer's Quick Take: Hi, everybody. And a happy end of summer back to school. Labor Day is coming up in a week and I am going to be back and at it in New York and around the world. But for now, a Quick Take and want to talk a little bit about the BRICS.
You saw the summit last week in South Africa, the headlines going into the summit, at least from the United States and its allies, was all about how Putin wasn't going to be allowed to attend. He had to attend virtually. One of the members of the BRICS, they can only send their foreign minister. Doesn't that show that, you know, the International Criminal Court means something, even though the Americans aren't actually a signatory to it? But that wasn't the real story.
The real story is that after a significant amount of Chinese diplomatic effort to expand the BRICS and make it more meaningful, which other members were skeptical about, there was significant success and an announcement that there will be six new members invited to join at the beginning of 2024. That's a very meaningful expansion. Egypt, Ethiopia, Argentina, UAE, Iran and Saudi Arabia. Presuming this all goes ahead, the BRICS will be the most important grouping of the so-called Global South. And I use that term advisedly because it's not quite clear that China is really a member of the Global South. It's much more important economically as a creditor of the Global South and increasingly wanting to have great influence over it, which a lot of members of the Global South want to resist. I'll get into that in a minute. But still, if you compare to what's been going on among the developing members of the G-20 to try to set a common agenda that more aligns with their interests as opposed to those of the United States and its allies in the G-7 who have become increasingly tight-knit post-Trump and post the Russian invasion of Ukraine.
I would say the BRICS are now supplanting that process as the most important piece of international architecture to watch, engage with, and to drive an agenda that matters to the countries of the Global South. And I think that the agenda-setting will be important on climate, it will be important on finance and the global economy. Maybe a bit on Russia, Ukraine, and also in efforts to resist weaponization of the US dollar. In other words, these are a whole bunch of countries that don't really like the fact that the Americans have leveraged a dominant position in the international financial system and as global reserve currency to have more influence over their own economic outcomes. I don't think this really means dollarization or the replacement with a BRICS currency any time soon. The role of the US dollar in global reserve currencies held by central banks around the world has been roughly the same for the last 20 years, and that, I suspect, will be true in another 10, another 15, 20 years as well. But nonetheless, in terms of a willingness of a whole bunch of countries to say we are not happy with the present global agenda as being set in their interests by the United States and allies, the BRICS will be an alternative, that is important, that will matter more economically over time and on some issues will be cohesive. So in that regard, I think it is important and I think we should spend more time following it and covering it.
As you know, we do other major sub-global confabs out there. A few points as rejoinders to that though, first of all, Argentina is not actually going to join. The present Argentine government very happy to. That is a leftist government that is much more aligned with China in particular. Their economy is falling apart. It is almost certain that after elections we will have a center-right or perhaps a far right libertarian government, either Bullrich or Milei in charge of Argentina. Both have said that they would not join the BRICS. So let's take Argentina out of the equation.
The countries that are left, it's interesting. It's all kind of one very broad region. We're talking about the Middle East and kind of northeast Africa. So again, UAE, Saudi Arabia and Iran, Egypt, and Ethiopia. Let's look at what that means. In the case of the Middle East, this is the region of the world that is becoming much less aligned with the United States, much more focused on the fact that they have to be self-sufficient, in part because the Americans aren't as interested, in part because the Americans are core competitors for energy, fossil fuel, energy development and export, then the Saudis, the Emiratis, and the Iranians.
So some of it is the US paying less attention, some of it is US driving a climate agenda to a greater degree than they were before. Some of it is the Americans are not a part of OPEC and competing with OPEC. And so for all of these reasons, what you see is the countries from the Middle East wanting to go more their own way, wanting to balance and hedge and be a part of everything. So keep their security relations with the US if they're Saudi Arabia and the UAE, but also work more closely with the Chinese and with everyone else that has significant demand for that energy. Hence the Saudis and the Iranians having a diplomatic engagement that the Chinese, that breakthrough sponsored by China, hence the Saudis inviting everyone, the Americans and the Chinese and the Ukrainians, everyone but Russia to be a part of what has been so far the most significant diplomatic effort around the Russian-Ukraine war and the fact that the Saudis, the Emirates and the Iranians are all now joining the BRICS is a significant additional movement. I would argue the Middle East is becoming more geopolitically stable, but also less aligned with the United States, more playing a balancing role with everyone. In the case of Ethiopia, that is a very significant, very populous country in Africa that is overwhelmingly aligned economically with China. That's where the money is. The United States doesn't play much of a role.
I think the next round of BRICS expansion looking forward is probably more likely to have the most interest from other sub-Saharan African countries. How many actually join is an open question, but that's certainly the easiest grouping that you can see wanting to be a part of the BRICS for all the reasons we just talked about. And then finally, I would say, let's also recognize what the BRICS is not. The BRICS is not a China-led competitor to the G-7, and that is because most of the countries that are in the BRICS, not all, but most do not want it to be. They don't want it to be led by China. Think about India in that regard in particular. And they don't want it to be a competitor to the G-7 where they have to join one and not the other. They want to have good economic relations with both. The economic order is a multipolar order. It is not a Cold War environment, and the security order is driven primarily by the United States. And you have to put BRICS expansion into that broader global framework. So the BRICS will matter more economically. They will facilitate far more Middle Eastern hedging. They will also facilitate greater agenda-setting in the global economy, broadly defined by the Global South. But that is not suddenly a decoupling of the world into G-7 versus BRICS. That's certainly not what we're going to see. So very important, a meaningful diplomatic win for the Chinese, not aligned with what the United States is trying to accomplish with the G-7 and with NATO broadly speaking, but not directly confrontational either. It's messy, it's nuanced. It doesn't easily lend itself to a five-second headline, but a ten-minute Quick Take. What the hell?
So anyway, that's it for me. Hope everyone's doing well. Enjoy this last days of summer and I'll talk to you all real soon.
- Will anything come out of the BRICS summit? ›
- Viewpoint: BRICS countries seek to expand global influence ›
- What’s come out of the BRICS summit? ›
- The Global South is angry and mistrustful - Ian Bremmer - GZERO Media ›
- AI is an opportunity to build trust with the Global South: UN's Amandeep Singh Gill - GZERO Media ›
President of China Xi Jinping arrives at the 2023
What’s come out of the BRICS summit?
There’s perhaps never been more global attention on the annual BRICS summit – a bloc of five large developing countries including Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa – that just wrapped in Johannesburg.
That’s because Russia’s war in Ukraine has put renewed emphasis on the diplomatic power of Global South states that want to maintain solid relations with both the West and with US foes – like Russia.
So, what came out of the meeting often dismissed as a talk shop? All five states appeared to back expansion of the bloc. Though more than 20 states have put in formal bids to join, Brazil and India have been less keen on membership growth. But India’s PM Narendra Modi and Brazil’s President Lula da Silva both came out in support of expansion, which Russia and China have been pushing hard for in a bid to rival US-dominated institutions. Meanwhile, South Africa said on Wednesday that the group, which is based on consensus decision-making, had come up with a mechanism for new members to apply, though no details were given.
Heads of state from B,I,C,S attended in person, while R’s Vladimir Putin participated virtually because South Africa’s President Cyril Ramaphosa didn’t want to have to deal with the prospect of arresting the Russian president if he stepped foot on South African soil. (Pretoria is a party to the International Criminal Court, which has issued an arrest warrant for Putin for war crimes.)
Keeping Putin at arm’s length was easy enough to pull off this time around. But as Russia takes over BRICS chairmanship and is set to host the next summit in Kazan, Russia, in Oct. 2024, it’ll be much more awkward for Brazil, South Africa, and India to navigate this diplomatic balancing act.