{"id":498714,"date":"2026-02-23T11:20:07","date_gmt":"2026-02-23T11:20:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/498714\/"},"modified":"2026-02-23T11:20:07","modified_gmt":"2026-02-23T11:20:07","slug":"jim-oneill-questions-brics-challenge-to-the-west","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/498714\/","title":{"rendered":"Jim O\u2019Neill Questions BRICS Challenge to the West"},"content":{"rendered":"

BRICS challenging the West has been a central talking point in global economics for over two decades, and right now, the economist who coined the term is raising some real doubts about how far that challenge can actually go. Various major geopolitical and financial developments have catalyzed renewed scrutiny of the bloc\u2019s capacity to restructure the global economic order.<\/p>\n

Jim O\u2019Neill \u2014 member of the UK House of Lords, former chairman of Goldman Sachs Asset Management, and the man who created the BRIC acronym 25 years ago \u2014 sat down with Al Jazeera to talk about the BRICS economy<\/a>, the India-China trade relationship, and what the bloc\u2019s ongoing expansion actually means for the global financial order. Several key dimensions of that conversation \u2014 including BRICS pay and how it works as a concept, and whether de-dollarization is even a realistic near-term outcome \u2014 were also addressed at length. O\u2019Neill\u2019s take was blunt: the US may be doing more to accelerate its own decline than BRICS ever could.<\/p>\n

Also Read: Trump Tariffs Rise to 15% After Supreme Court Ruling, BRICS Watch Closely<\/a><\/p>\n

BRICS Challenging The West And Global Economy Amid India-China Trade\"BRICSSource: Watcher.GuruTrump Is Accidentally Fueling BRICS Challenging the West<\/p>\n

The idea of BRICS challenging the West has been treated with varying levels of seriousness over the years, but O\u2019Neill argued that Donald Trump has done something no US president managed before \u2014 he made BRICS politically relevant again. Trump\u2019s tariff threats have paradoxically spearheaded a legitimization of the very bloc they were meant to weaken across multiple significant policy fronts.<\/p>\n

O\u2019Neill described the warnings directed at member-state leaders as largely counterproductive, and also a bit ironic \u2014 no sitting US president had ever previously acknowledged BRICS publicly. That attention alone has pushed various major BRICS member states to take financial alternatives to the dollar more seriously, not less. O\u2019Neill actually wrote a piece at the time suggesting Trump might be acting as a kind of \u201csecret agent\u201d for the bloc.<\/p>\n

O\u2019Neill stated:<\/p>\n

\u201cIt effectively legitimizes the BRICS political club, and even more importantly, it of course makes the leaders of these countries think much more seriously about indeed creating an alternative financial state of affairs where they\u2019re not so dependent economically with the US.\u201d<\/p>\n

India-China Trade and the Dollar\u2019s Long Decline\"IndiaSource: fairobserver.com \/ Vladirina32 \/ ShutterStock<\/p>\n

On BRICS challenging the West through de-dollarization, O\u2019Neill took a measured stance and was also quite candid about the limits of prediction. Several key structural forces \u2014 both the push from US policy instability and the pull from countries seeking alternatives \u2014 have accelerated conditions that could, at some point, erode the dollar\u2019s dominance. The India-China trade relationship is, by O\u2019Neill\u2019s account, the single biggest variable in all of this right now. O\u2019Neill described Modi\u2019s visit to Beijing earlier this year \u2014 his first in seven years \u2014 as \u201cquite a large development,\u201d even if it was largely symbolic at this stage of things.<\/p>\n

O\u2019Neill had this to say:<\/p>\n

\u201cIf India and China were to do significant free trade things together and it involved other important Asian countries and beyond, the boost to their economies and the boost to global trade would be absolutely ginormous.\u201d<\/p>\n

The rest of the world represents 75% of global GDP, and right now, that share is also starting to trade more internally and a lot less with the US. Numerous significant shifts in regional trade dynamics<\/a> have engineered conditions that are structurally eroding the leverage Washington holds over the BRICS economy \u2014 and over global trade more broadly. BRICS vs the West, in that scenario, stops being a contest the US can easily win just by threatening tariffs.<\/p>\n

BRICS Pay, a Common Currency, and the Real Limits of the BRICS Economy<\/p>\n

On BRICS pay and how it works as a practical alternative to the dollar, O\u2019Neill was also direct \u2014 and pretty clear about where the ceiling is, at the time of writing. Multiple essential obstacles, including China\u2019s unwillingness to cede central bank independence, have effectively restructured the conversation around what a shared BRICS currency could realistically look like. BRICS vs the West remains more of a political posture than a coordinated financial strategy, and BRICS challenging the West through a unified currency system is, by O\u2019Neill\u2019s reading, a long way from being real.<\/p>\n

O\u2019Neill stated:<\/p>\n

\u201cAre the Chinese going to give up the independence of the People\u2019s Bank of China in order to have a currency that\u2019s a bit like a sort of BRICS version of the euro? Very very very unlikely and not in my lifetime.\u201d<\/p>\n

What China does get from BRICS right now is symbolism \u2014 and also a platform, which is a not-insignificant thing. Certain critical geopolitical motivations have pioneered China\u2019s push for BRICS expansion, allowing Beijing to institutionalize its role as a champion of the Global South. The BRICS economy, for all the noise surrounding it, still lacks a coherent shared strategy, and BRICS challenging the West in any meaningful structural sense will require a lot more than just a longer membership list.<\/p>\n

Also Read: Russia Pursuing BRICS Bridge for an Alternative Financial Corridor<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"BRICS challenging the West has been a central talking point in global economics for over two decades, and…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":498715,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[64,63,294,250938,99,512,164,1209,250939],"class_list":["post-498714","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-economy","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-brics","tag-brics-pay","tag-business","tag-china","tag-economy","tag-india","tag-jim-oneill"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/498714","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=498714"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/498714\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/498715"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=498714"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=498714"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=498714"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}