President Trump’s latest round of tariffs will hit key Global South powers particularly hard. Both India and Brazil are facing 50% duties that have little to do with trade imbalances. For India, the tariffs are retaliation for its Russian oil imports, while for Brazil the levies come in response to the prosecution of Trump’s ally, former President Jair Bolsonaro. Trump has also threatened additional tariffs on India and Brazil due to their participation in BRICS, which the president accuses of being “anti-American.”
These moves underscore how the Trump administration’s tariff policy threatens to do long-term damage to U.S. geopolitical interests while doing little to advance an America First agenda.
Neither India nor Brazil appears willing to accede to Trump’s demands, setting up a dynamic that could strengthen BRICS’ cohesion, push India closer to Russia and China, and undercut U.S. influence in the Indo-Pacific. In short, Trump’s attempt to coerce India and Brazil could accelerate the very geopolitical realignment Washington fears.
In the case of India, two decades of hard-won advancements in bilateral relations are at risk.
Since the mid-2000s, bilateral defense and technology cooperation has flourished and the United States’ Indo-Pacific strategy has relied heavily on India as a counterweight to Chinese influence and power projection in the region.
At the same time, India prizes strategic autonomy in its foreign policy – it has close relations with Russia and the United States, is a founding member of BRICS, and also part of the Chinese-led Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO), despite its often-tense ties with China. Russia’s cheap crude is essential for India’s growth, and New Delhi has viewed Moscow as a reliable partner for decades.
Trump’s moves to pressure India on Russian oil imports and BRICS membership are viewed across the fractious Indian political spectrum as coercive and hypocritical given Europe's continued purchases of Russian energy and trade with Moscow. “We reiterate that these actions are unfair, unjustified and unreasonable,” said an Indian Ministry of External Affairs statement.
While in India, Trump’s tariffs are viewed as interference in its foreign policy, in Brazil, they are viewed as meddling in domestic affairs.
Aside from the tariffs, Trump has also sanctioned a Brazilian judge involved in the judicial proceedings against Bolsonaro. Although the U.S.-Brazil relationship does not have the geopolitical import of U.S. ties with India, strong relations between the two biggest democracies in the Americas are important for stability and prosperity in the Western hemisphere. A healthy U.S.-Brazil relationship can also help advance U.S. leadership in South America at a time when Chinese influence in the region, particularly related to trade, is ascendant.
But, according to analysts, Trump’s interference will push bilateral relations in the opposite direction. Brazilians will see the United States as an erratic actor, weakening trade ties and U.S. influence in not just Brazil but South America writ large.
BRICS is growing in size and influence – including its member and partner countries, it accounts for 56% of the world’s population and 44% of global GDP. But there are divisions within the bloc, and India and Brazil are important counterweights to China’s and Russia’s vision for BRICS.
Whereas Moscow and Beijing are U.S. rivals and want the Global South grouping to be more explicitly anti-Western in its agenda, New Delhi and Brasilia see BRICS as a vehicle to advance their global standing and democratize and reform the existing U.S.-led international order, not to subvert or replace it altogether. Critics of BRICS often rightly point to these differences as a chief reason that the bloc is not more influential or effective.
Trump’s tariffs and interference could change all that, pushing India and Brazil to side more with China and Russia against perceived Western hegemony, damaging U.S. interests in the competition for global influence.
Indeed, there are early indications that this may already be happening. Modi now plans to visit China for the first time in seven years to attend the upcoming SCO summit. Indian and Chinese airlines are expected to resume direct flights next month after a five year hiatus and a shipment of refined India diesel is set to arrive in China for the first time since 2021.
Meanwhile, Brazil-China times are at an all-time high, according to Xi Jinping, who said on a call this week with Brazilian president Lula Da Silva that China would “work with Brazil to set an example of unity and self-reliance among major countries in the Global South.”
Trump has long touted tariffs as an essential tool to advance an America First agenda, saying they could help rebuild American manufacturing and rebalance unequitable trade relations. But using tariffs as an indiscriminate tool of pressure and punishment is counterproductive to U.S. geopolitical interests without clear gains at home.
BRICS was founded, in part, to push back against U.S. economic coercion. But that doesn’t mean it is or has to be anti-American in orientation. The continued use of tariffs to coerce Global South countries could result in strange bedfellows like India and China becoming close partners to counter perceived U.S. bullying. If the United States wants to prevent the rise of anti-U.S. coalitions and advance its interests and influence, it should address differences with diplomacy, not by weaponizing trade relations.
Adam Gallagher is a contributing fellow at Defense Priorities and a strategic leaders fellow at the John Quincy Adams Society. Follow him on X @AEGallagher10.
