Not Just Waiting Around For Higher Tariffs, China Looks To BRICS
Date
12/17/2024 7:05:46 PM
(MENAFN- Asia Times)
Donald Trump's cabinet appointments and policy pronouncements have been dominating the headlines and many of these appointments and pronouncements have dire implications for China. The Chinese have noticed.
They're signaling some of the ways they will react if trump tries to shut China out of the US market. You might even say they're reacting pre-emptively.
Trump has chosen China hawks for his secretary of state (Marco Rubio), national security advisor (Mike Walz) and ambassador to China (David Perdue). He has repeated his promises to impose 60% tariffs on Chinese products. The other day, he threatened the nine members of the BRICS bloc, which include China, with 100% tariffs if they attempt to replace the US dollar as the world's reserve currency.
The BRICS countries aren't seriously threatening to do that – any time soon, at least. For the Chinese yuan – the obvious candidate – to play the reserve-currency role, China would have to liberate its controls on flows of capital. It doesn't want to do that.
But BRICS is an important part of China's reaction to the risk of severe limitations on its access to the US market. The idea is diversification – relying more on other trading partners for both imports and exports. As US farmers can easily imagine, Brazil – the B in BRICS – is near the top of China's dance card.
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