The Trump administration’s aggressive tariff policy is reshaping the global order. Yet not only in the intended way. It may be winning the economic battle in the short term and losing the geopolitical war in the long term. The countries of the global south—that is to say, the global majority—who advocate for multipolarity are standing up to U.S. hegemony in a manner perhaps not seen before. And India is at the center.
On Thursday, new tariffs went into effect on more than 90 countries, with an average rate of 18 percent. But some of the biggest tariffs were imposed on the original BRICS nations in, as the New York Times put it, “a form of geopolitical punishment” for resisting U.S. hegemony, namely by economically supporting Russia in its war against Ukraine.
Brazil has been hit with 50 percent tariffs on U.S. exports. India has been hit with 50 percent and, along with China, is expected to be hit with even more if they refuse the U.S. demand to stop purchasing Russian oil. South Africa has been hit with 30 percent, the highest rate in Africa.
Brazil said no to the United States, reminding the U.S. that “Brazil is a sovereign nation.” China, too, refused to capitulate, reminding the U.S. that it is a sovereign nation. China’s Foreign Ministry Spokesman Guo Jiakun said that “China will take energy supply measures that are right for China based on our national interests. Tariff wars have no winners. Coercion and pressuring cannot solve problems. China will firmly safeguard its own sovereignty, security and development interests.”
South Africa, too, has resisted U.S. pressure. “If the US imposes high tariffs,” South Africa’s minister of mineral and petroleum resources said, “we must look for alternative markets. Our biggest trading partner is China, not the US.” In response to the new U.S. tariffs on Africa, the Nigerian economist Bismarck Rewane told CNN that Africa is “going straight into the hands of China.” Läs artikel