BRICS Bets on Dollar Escape—But Trump’s Fury Awaits

Despite flashy headlines, skepticism looms over BRICS’ attempt to bypass the U.S.-led financial system—especially with Trump looming large on the global stage.

The fanfare surrounding the launch of the so-called "BRICS Pay Network" at the 2025 BRICS Engineering Congress in Shenzhen has sent corners of the alternative media into overdrive. Headlines trumpet a “post-dollar world,” the “end of Western hegemony,” and the rise of a “sovereign financial order.”

But beneath the surface of these grand proclamations lies a series of practical and political obstacles—not least of which is the looming figure of Donald J. Trump, the presumptive Republican nominee and vocal enforcer of America’s financial primacy.

Let’s start with the basics. The BRICS Pay Network is not a currency. It is a messaging and settlement system—like SWIFT—intended to facilitate interbank transactions in member nations’ local currencies. While it's certainly a step toward financial decoupling, it does **not** create a unified BRICS currency or economic bloc capable of replacing the U.S. dollar anytime soon.

For years, BRICS members have floated the idea of creating a shared reserve currency backed by a basket of commodities or currencies. But deep political, economic, and ideological rifts—especially between India and China—have repeatedly delayed any serious progress. Currency union, even among far more homogenous blocs like the Eurozone, takes decades and painful compromise. The notion that BRICS could achieve it rapidly, amid wars, sanctions, and internal rivalries, is naive.

Reports of “instant settlements,” “blockchain-based auditing,” and “ironclad security” sound impressive, but they sidestep a core reality: *international finance runs on trust and scale*, not on tech specs alone. Swift, cumbersome as it may be, is embedded in over 11,000 institutions across 200 countries. BRICS Pay would need not just adoption, but legal harmonization, cross-border compliance, and interoperability with commercial banks worldwide.

More importantly, many of the BRICS countries are plagued by corruption, currency instability, and regulatory opacity. If a Nigerian, Russian, or Iranian bank shows up to transact on this new system, will global firms trust it over the dollar-clearing system of New York or London? That’s far from certain.

Perhaps the most overlooked variable is Donald Trump himself. The former president has already signaled fury over "dollar betrayal" and has vowed to punish any nation attempting to “topple the U.S. economic throne.”

During his first term, Trump weaponized tariffs, sanctions, and trade policy with unapologetic force. In a second term, few doubt he would take a scorched-earth approach to countries promoting dollar alternatives. Saudi Arabia and the UAE—now BRICS members—are particularly vulnerable, as their oil-driven economies are deeply intertwined with the U.S. financial system. If they begin pricing oil outside of dollars, expect immediate political and economic blowback.

In fact, Trump-aligned think tanks are already floating retaliatory legislation: banning U.S. firms from dealing with BRICS Pay-affiliated entities, secondary sanctions on banks participating in non-dollar oil trades, and leveraging SWIFT itself to isolate the system, ironically turning the new BRICS network into a magnet for punishment.

Even within BRICS, cracks are evident. India remains skeptical of China’s motives, Brazil’s economy is heavily tied to Western markets, and internal contradictions between authoritarian and democratic regimes make coordinated monetary policy elusive. The idea that these countries could quickly align on interest rates, inflation targeting, and capital controls is not just speculative—it borders on fantasy.

And while Iran and Russia cheer the project as an escape hatch from sanctions, their economic desperation undermines the very credibility they hope to project. The more the BRICS Pay Network becomes a refuge for pariah states, the more likely it is to be viewed as a financial backwater rather than a legitimate alternative.

The BRICS Pay Network is not meaningless—it reflects growing discontent with dollar dominance and a desire among some nations to reclaim financial autonomy. But its current form is miles away from threatening the dollar's central role in global trade and finance.

For now, this is less a revolution and more a symbolic protest—a politically charged experiment whose success hinges not just on infrastructure, but on unity, trust, and resilience in the face of immense geopolitical pressure.

With Trump watching, and retaliation likely, the BRICS bloc may soon discover that challenging U.S. financial hegemony requires more than a new payment system. It requires a whole new world order—something far harder to code, and even harder to control.

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