Even before officially taking office, United States President-elect Donald J Trump is shaking up the international system with drama and fanfare unlike any other major leader in recent memory. His most recent outburst to slap 100% tariffs on the "Brics" countries -- Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa, as well as Egypt, Ethiopia, Iran and the United Arab Emirates -- is a case in point. While it will coerce developing economies to think twice about the cost of going their own way, this tariff blackmail and others like it also risk pushing smaller countries away from the US to other rival big powers, particularly China.
The president-elect's latest ire was in reaction to the Brics members' interest in coming up with their own currency against the US dollar. Mr Trump's typically blustery response was unsurprising and proved the point of Brics that "Global South" countries need to organise on their own to reduce dependence on the weight of the US economy and its currency. Further US weaponisation of trade policy and geoeconomic toolkit will likely push developing economies in the Brics and Global South in this direction for fear of excessive reliance on US trade and investment and being punished for it.
At their meeting in Kazan, Russia, last October, the Brics members decidedly expanded their network to include a motley bunch of 13 "partner" countries that include four from Southeast Asia, namely Indonesia, Malaysia, Thailand, and Vietnam, alongside Algeria, Belarus, Bolivia, Cuba, Kazakhstan, Nigeria, Turkey, Uganda, and Uzbekistan. While partnership status is not equivalent to that of membership, the 13 new Brics associates clearly see the outfit as an insurance policy amid geoeconomic turbulence and geopolitical turmoil from Russia's war in Ukraine, conflicts in the Middle East, and the US-China confrontation, underpinned by a breakdown of the rules-based international order.
Partnership in Brics allows them to access loans from Brics' New Development Bank, which is headquartered in Shanghai, and benefit from trade and investment opportunities. The Trump tariff threat will likely hold back some of the Brics partners in Southeast Asia, particularly Thailand and Vietnam, from taking on full membership.
For Southeast Asia, more broadly, Brics provides geostrategic space. As a fast-growing region in the world economy with half the market size of China and a combined GDP of nearly US$4 trillion dollars, essentially the intersection of insecurity and prosperity in the Indo-Pacific, Southeast Asia broadly sees Brics as a mixed bag. On the one hand, the Brics club offers geopolitical leverage vis-à-vis the West despite limited geoeconomic benefits, especially for Indonesia, which is the world's largest Muslim country and a member of the G20, and Malaysia, which chairs Asean in 2025.
These two predominantly Muslim societies hold solidarity with the Palestinians and are opposed to US backing for Israel's war actions in the Middle East and the resulting humanitarian crises. Brics to Indonesia and Malaysia is both a diversification strategy and a critical expression against the US and Israel. It is unsurprising that both Indonesia and Malaysia have recently promoted greater cooperation with China, thanks to Malaysian Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim meeting with Chinese President Xi Jinping in Beijing last month and Indonesia's newly elected President Prabowo Subianto agreeing to joint exploration with China in an adjacent sea area previously thought to be under Indonesian sovereignty.
Malaysia, in particular, wants to maximise its international role and geostrategic projection. Having consolidated political power under a coalition government with an eye for a re-election bid, Prime Minister Anwar wants to make the most of his international engagements and partly convert them for domestic electoral dividends. Openly critical of Israel without formal diplomatic relations with the Jewish state, Malaysia has correspondingly supported Hamas.
In a speech to a think-tank gathering in June this year, the Malaysian prime minister had strong words to say about Israeli actions, including "war crimes, flagrant atrocities committed in the killing fields under the pretext of self-defence and settler colonialism" while prioritising the Myanmar civil war over the Russia-Ukraine conflict as the most pressing issue for Asean. Clearly, the timing of a Brics partnership is favourable for Malaysia as it allows the country to leverage another strategic stage in its dealings with the West and geostrategic balancing in its neighbourhood.
Thailand is a US treaty ally and Vietnam a comprehensive strategic partner. Both Thailand and Vietnam rely heavily on the US as an export market. Both countries are not as vehement about conflicts in the Middle East, and, therefore, Brics provide them with a complementary company of states and economies in case the international system completely unravels. As a strategy of diversification, Indonesia and Thailand also have shown interest in joining the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development, the 38-member club of developed economies.
To be sure, while Brics serves as a proactive hedge against worsening global uncertainty, membership or even partnership risks are taking Southeast Asia's regional states into a conflict arena they have intended to avoid. As founding members, Russia is conducting a gruelling war in Ukraine and China has locked horns with the US. As a new member, Iran and its proxies in Hamas and Hezbollah are in open conflict with Israel.
These tensions and conflicts could be exploited by certain Brics members and thereby drag the whole group into murky and precarious directions.
Much will depend on what the second Trump administration ends up doing. If Mr Trump goes too far with his tariff threats and actions, then Brics will likely become more appealing as a bulwark against US belligerence and protectionism. But if the president-elect ends up treating tariffs as part of a package rather than a unilateral imposition in a universal fashion, then developing economies will likely be in less of a hurry to jump and ride on the Brics bandwagon.