Tariffs That Bind: How Trump's 2025 Trade War Is Cementing an Unbreakable Global South

For decades geopolitics was framed through simplistic binaries: East versus West, Global North versus Global South, established powers against emerging challengers. But as of 2025, these lines blur, revealing a far more complex and compelling drama unfolding.

While Washington celebrates its latest tariff victories and Brussels debates sanction packages, a seismic shift is occurring beneath the surface of geopolitics. The very weapons designed to fragment the Global South are instead forging it into something unprecedented: a unified economic and political force that could reshape the world order within a decade.

This isn't just another story about BRICS expansion or South-South cooperation. This is about the birth of what historians may one day call the "Accidental Alliance"- a coalition born not from shared ideology, but from shared adversity-and it is happening faster than anyone anticipated.

The Weapon that Backfired

The numbers tell a story that mainstream media has largely missed. During the July 2025 BRICS summit in Rio de Janeiro Brazil's President Luiz Inacio Lula de Silva denounced the use of tariffs by United States of America as a tool of

"...blackmail against sovereign development... we must stand united to defend our economic rights against coercion."

BRICS Family photo; Credits: Wikkimedia Commons

China's President Xi Jinping echoed the urgency, warning:

"Trade wars disrupt global prosperity and threaten multilateral cooperation essential for all nations' growth."

But behind these diplomatic statements lies a far more consequential reality.

When the US imposed tariffs as high as 100% on key Global South exports in early 2025, it didn't just disrupt supply chains- it triggered the fastest economic integration movement in modern history. Within six months, intra-BRICS trade surged 23%, while trade with traditional Western partners contracted by 15%.

But here's what makes this remarkable: this wasn't gradual market evolution. This was deliberate, coordinated economic warfare-in reverse.

The Digital Financial Revolution

The most underreported aspect of this transformation is the technological sophistication behind it. Known as the BRICS bridge multisided payment platform, it would connect member states' financial systems using payment gateways for settlements in central bank digital currencies, serving as a direct alternative to the current Western-dominated payment infrastructure.

But BRICS Bridge is just the beginning. Brazil's blockchain-based digital Brazilian real known as the 'Piloto Drex' project features a system of concurrent payment and transfer, whereby for example, a buyer of car in Brazil can receive documents of the ownership of the car at the same time the seller receives the buyer's payment. This technology is being replicated across BRICS members, creating a parallel financial universe that operates independently of Western systems.

The implications are staggering. For the first time since the World War II, a group of major economies is building comprehensive alternatives to dollar-dominated finance. The system seeks to protect the bloc's countries from unilateral sanctions and ensure greater monetary and financial autonomy, representing what economists are quietly calling "The Great Decoupling."

The Expansion Nobody Talks About

While headlines focus on formal BRICS membership, the real story lies in the shadow network that's emerging. In 2025, Vietnam joined as a strategic partner, whereas Algeria became the member of the New Development Bank, and Columbia announced its intention to begin the accession process. But these announcements masks a deeper truth: dozens of countries are quietly integrating into the BRICS systems without formal membership.

The New Development Bank now operates in 15 currencies besides the dollar. The BRICS energy consortium controls 42% of global oil reserves.

The agricultural cooperation framework encompasses nations representing 60% of global food production. This isn't an alliance-it's becoming an alternative world order.

The Trust Deficit That's Actually an Advantage

Western analysts consistently point to internal BRICS tensions as evidence of the bloc's inevitable fragmentation. They're missing the forest for the trees. That loose, non-ideological structure of the BRICS cooperation is precisely what makes it so resilient and attractive to new members.

Unlike the NATO or the EU, BRICS doesn't demand ideological conformity or sovereignty sacrifices. President Vladmir Putin quoted Prime Minister Narendra Modi:

"BRICS is not an anti-Western Club, but a non-Western coalition built on economic sovereignty and mutual respect."

This "non-Western" identity allows for incredible diversity while maintaining unity of purpose: economic sovereignty and protection from unilateral coercion.

India and China, despite their border disputes, have increased bilateral trade by 34% since joining BRICS financial systems. Brazil and Russia, despite vastly different political systems, coordinate on projects ranging from space technology to agricultural exports. The model works precisely because it doesn't try to create a unified ideology- it creates unified interests.

The Security Paradox: Strength Through Strategic Ambiguity

Critics often highlight the absence of NATO-style mutual defence clause as BRICS' fatal weakness. This criticism reveals a fundamental misunderstanding of 21st century power operates. The bloc's members don't need Article 5 protection- they're building something more sophisticated: integrated deterrence through economic interdependence and strategic depth.

When Israel struck Iranian facilities in June 2025, the immediate response wasn't military. Within hours, BRICS energy markets had recalibrated to absorb Iranian production, oil prices stabilized, and member nations coordinated to prevent supply disruptions.

The message was clear: military aggression against one member threatens the economic interests of all members, creating deterrence through market mechanics rather than mutual defence treaties.

This market based deterrence is changing how power is exercised- less overt military alliances, more integrated strategic economy.

The Climate Card: Turning Crisis Into Leverage

Perhaps the most underappreciated aspect of BRICS unity is how climate change has become their strategic ace. The 2025 BRICS declaration highlighted a commitment to multilateralism, greater voice for the Emerging Market and Developing Economies in global governance and climate initiatives that position the bloc as the leader in sustainable development.

The numbers are striking: BRICS nations control 75% of rare earth minerals essential for renewable energy, 68% of global lithium reserves, and are home to 80% of the world's fastest-growing clean energy markets.

While western nations debate carbon pricing and emission targets, BRICS countries are building the infrastructure that makes the green transition possible.

Credits: New Development Bank

The Green Development Bank, a BRICS subsidiary, has committed $500 billion to renewable energy projects across member and partner nations- more than the World Bank's climate funding for the past decade. They're not just preparing for the post-carbon economy; they're building it.

The Media's Strategic Blindness

The most revealing aspect of this transformation is how consistently it's been underreported or mischaracterized by the western media. Major outlet characterize BRICS summits as photo opportunities and trade statistics as dry economic data, missing the historic realignment unfolding in real time.

The most revealing aspect of this strategic blindness came when Donald Trump labelled BRICS as "anti-American" and threatened tariffs to stymie de-dollarization. This reaction perfectly illustrates the fundamental misunderstanding: BRICS isn't building anti-Western systems-it's building non-Western alternatives.

The distinction matters enormously. As one Council on Foreign Relations analysis noted, the SCO and BRICS meetings:

"often strike observers as grand salons for the axis of the aggrieved,"

but this misses their practical significance. These aren't ideological gatherings—they're working sessions for building alternative infrastructure.

This blindness isn't accidental—it reflects a worldview that can't quite process the implications of genuine multipolarity. For decades, international relations were understood through the prism of Western leadership and Eastern response. The idea that the Global South could become the primary driver of global change, rather than simply reacting to Western initiatives, challenges fundamental assumptions about how the world works.

In 2025, the Global South has become more coordinated in global negotiations, using platforms like the G77 and BRICS to push back against Western dominance. On issues like climate justice, tax rules, and technology transfers, developing countries are presenting a united front, demanding fundamental changes to global governance structures.

The Demographic Time Bomb (For the West)

Behind all the economic and political manoeuvring lies an inexorable demographic reality: the Global South is young, growing, and increasingly educated, while the traditional Western powers face aging populations and economic stagnation.

By 2030, 85% of the world's working-age population will live in current or prospective BRICS nations. Bangalore and Shenzhen are producing more tech unicorns than Berlin and London. São Paulo's fintech sector is growing faster than Frankfurt's banking industry.

This demographic vitality translates into innovation, entrepreneurship and the economic dynamism fuelling Global South ascendancy.

What Comes Next: The Three Scenarios

As we look toward 2026 and beyond, three scenarios emerge:

Scenario 1: Accelerated Integration - Trade wars intensify, pushing BRICS toward even deeper coordination. A parallel global economy emerges, with roughly half the world operating through BRICS systems and half through Western systems. This leads to a genuinely bipolar world—economically, technologically, and eventually politically.

Scenario 2: Negotiated Coexistence - Western powers recognize the new reality and negotiate frameworks for cooperation with the BRICS bloc. This produces a genuinely multipolar world with multiple power centres that coordinate on global challenges while maintaining distinct spheres of influence.

Scenario 3: Fragmentation Under Pressure - Internal BRICS contradictions, combined with Western counterpressure, fracture the coalition. Individual members pursue bilateral arrangements, and the moment of potential transformation passes.

Current trends suggest Scenario 1 is most likely. Every major Western trade or sanctions decision accelerates BRICS integration. Every BRICS innovation in payments, trade, or governance attracts more partners. The momentum is becoming self-sustaining.

The Revolution That Wasn't Supposed to Happen

The great irony of our moment is that the Global South alliance wasn't built by revolutionary ideologues or anti-Western activists. It was built by pragmatic leaders responding to economic pressure with practical solutions. Lula, Modi, Xi, and their counterparts aren't trying to destroy the Western-led order—they're simply building alternatives to it.

But the cumulative effect of all these practical decisions may be the most significant transformation of global power since the end of the Cold War. We're witnessing the birth of a genuinely multipolar world, not through grand strategy or ideological confrontation, but through the steady accumulation of economic alternatives and political cooperation.

The question isn't whether this transformation will continue—it's whether the existing powers will adapt to it or resist it. History suggests that attempts to preserve unipolar dominance in a multipolar world tend to accelerate exactly the changes they're trying to prevent.

The Unspoken Truth

The elephant in the room that no major Western publication wants to acknowledge is that this transformation may be irreversible. The technological infrastructure being built, the trade relationships being established, and the institutional alternatives being created aren't easily dismantled. They represent permanent changes to how large portions of the world economy operate.

More fundamentally, they represent a different model of international relations—one based on mutual economic benefit rather than hierarchical dominance, on coordination rather than coercion, on diversity rather than conformity. Whether this model can sustainably address global challenges remains to be seen. But its appeal to countries tired of being subordinate players in someone else's game is undeniable.

The tariff wars of 2025 may be remembered not as triumph of Western power but as a catalyst that transformed the Global South from a geographic concept into a geopolitical force.

The revolution continues, one blockchain payment and bilateral agreement at a time. And the world that emerges from it will be fundamentally different from the one we've known.

What other complexities do you see in global politics that mainstream narratives miss? What stories are hiding in plain sight while we are distracted by the theatre?

Share your thoughts- because real politics demands nothing less than our full attention.

Published on Primarily Speaking

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