Is “De-Dollerization” On The Table? BRICS Summit Approaches As Trade War Simmers

This article was written by Brandon Smith and originally published at Birch Gold Group

For many years now I have been talking about the growing global economic divide between East and West. This volatile opposition between the BRICS nations and the US is not a product of the Trump era. It has been decades in the making with a myriad of complex working parts and numerous US trading partners have been preparing for the fallout as far back as 2008.

At the same time behind the scenes there have been malicious influences at play: Special interests within the Davos community have been working diligently to undermine the US economy and the dollar. But what is the ultimate aim of this agenda?

In 2018 I published an article titled ‘World War III Will Be An Economic War’ – In it I outlined the basic mechanics of the East vs West paradigm and how banking institutions like the IMF and BIS were positioning to take advantage of the chaos. At the time, the “trade war” witnessed a kind of false start, but all the pieces were there for what we are seeing today. Don’t let the 90 day pauses on some tariffs fool you, economic decoupling is going to be the dominant theme of the decade and the tariffs will undoubtedly spring up over and over again.

Trump’s incredible return to the White House sets the stage for the end of globalism (and that’s a good thing), but I want to make it clear that the pitfalls are numerous and the establishment could try to use the end of the old world order to bring in their “new world order”.

In 2018 I noted:

“The bottom line is this: Russia and China are in full support of globalist controlled institutions like the Bank for International Settlements (the central bank of central banks) and the International Monetary Fund (IMF). The governments of both nations have called for the IMF to assert their Special Drawing Rights basket currency framework as a foundation for a new world reserve currency system. Again, both Russia and China want the IMF, a globalist controlled entity, to become the de facto ruler of a new global monetary structure…”

“With the rise of simple to generate cryptocurrencies and the easily tracked blockchain exchange mechanism, globalists now have the perfect liquidity tool for replacing the dollar as world reserve. All they need now is a crisis event to provide cover for the transition…”

“…It would appear that a crisis event is now being triggered in the form of an international trade war. This trade war, in my view, is designed to become so widespread that it will one day be considered a “world war.”

As I’ve mentioned many times, the dollar’s world reserve status, instituted with the Bretton Woods Agreement in 1944, has long been America’s Achilles Heel.

The US technically enjoys an enviable trade advantage as well as a monetary stimulus advantage because the dollar is used in the majority of international transactions. This means the Federal Reserve can print dollars with wild abandon and most of them will be absorbed overseas by foreign banks, governments and corporations. In this way, the dollar is already a kind of beta test for a one world currency.

However, the Bretton Woods Agreement came with a series of caveats, some of them unspoken. For the “privilege” of controlling the reserve currency, the US is expected to financially backstop allies as well as provide the vast majority of military support for NATO. The revelations behind the DOGE audits alone show an endless flood of dollars from American taxpayer funds into a vast array of subsidies for foreign governments. Americans has been paying for everyone and everything.

You know those supposedly amazing social welfare and healthcare programs in Europe? Yeah, we make that possible through billions in foreign aid to the those countries along with hundreds of billions spent on defense so that Europeans can sleep easy at night.

The situation is even worse when we consider how many trillions of dollars were created from thin air by the Federal Rserve and transferred overseas after the crash of 2008. Not to mention the trillions poured into foreign economies during the pandemic. In the meantime, relentless money creation is finally catching up to us in the form of a stagflation crisis. The dollar system, as we know it, is precariously unstable and more stimulus is not going to save it.

It’s not surprising the US has been hit with an inflationary freight train. We haven’t just been printing dollars for ourselves, we’ve been printing dollars for the entire planet.

The old world agreements are ending, and in many ways this is necessary. European leaders are going full authoritarian; they now throw people in prison daily for online speech and they are also throwing their right-leaning political opponents in prison to prevent them from participating in elections. Europe is no longer our ally and the US public is starting to realize it.

Outsourced production in Asia, the foundation of the current global supply chain, is in need of reform. Because of our reserve status America has become the world’s cash cow. We have been relegated to the position of dutiful consumer nation, spending our increasingly devalued dollars in a spiraling cycle of inflationary decline while we produce very little on our own soil.

Donald Trump’s tariff actions, which I suspect will be cumulative over the next few years, are an expression of America’s desire to end the globalist status quo and bring back balance. That said, the rhetoric from the rest of the world and the media is that these tariffs constitute an “act of war”.

As I predicted years ago, the US is not allowed to stray from the Bretton Woods system without being painted as an “aggressor” nation bent on destroying our neighbors. Keep in mind, most of the countries affected by Trump’s tariffs have had their own tariffs on American goods for decades. When they do it, it’s normal. When we do it, it’s a betrayal.

Enter the BRICS; this international trade body is currently headed by Brazil and includes China, Russia, India, South Africa, Egypt, Ethiopia, Iran, Saudi Arabia, and the United Arab Emirates among others. The running theory for many alternative economists is that the BRICS will eventually move to fully decouple from the US dollar and introduce their own shared currency system.

I have posited a similar theory, though I argue that the situation is not as simple as some analysts think. This is not just an East vs West division leading to a break in the dollar structure; there is a lot more going on.

Ten years ago the BRICS were in a much better position economically and that would have been the time to introduce a competing monetary framework. Today, Russia is in the midst of a proxy war with NATO in Ukraine, China is on the edge of deflationary collapse and South Africa is on the edge of social collapse. There’s not a single BRICS member beyond oil producers like Saudi Arabia that is not facing extreme fiscal turmoil. In other words, the BRICS do not currently have the ability to counter the dollar.

That said, I don’t think this was ever the plan. Rather, globalist institutions like the IMF, BIS and World Bank have been preparing for the rollout of CBDCs (Central Bank Digital Currencies) along with a single IMF controlled global digital currency attached to the SDR basket. The BRICS cannot compete with the dollar, unless the IMF and BIS help them to do so.

As IMF Managing Director Kristalina Georgieva admitted in 2023:

“CBDCs should not be fragmented national propositions… To have more efficient and fairer transactions we need systems that connect countries: we need interoperability…For this reason at the IMF, we are working on the concept of a global CBDC platform.”

Such program could only be accomplished after serious economic turmoil has made the populations of all nations desperate for a centralized solution. The upcoming BRICS Summit in Rio de Janeiro, slated for July, should be watched carefully because it is timed almost exactly in line with the end of Trump’s 90 day tariff pause. The summit is expected to address the trade war in depth as well as the subject of “de-dollerization”. Trump has previously threatened a 150% tariff on any country that makes an attempt to de-dollerize.

While speaking at the BRICS Summit in 2024, held at Kazan (Russia), Russian President Vladimir Putin said:

“The dollar is being used as a weapon. We really see that this is so. I think that this is a big mistake by those who do this”.

This was the same summit where Putin shared a mock up of a “BRICS dollar” and spoke about the adaptation of a BRICS currency. Of course, Russia is in no position to field a new reserve currency and neither is China, but I believe this talk is a precursor to a larger international push for a new reserve system managed by the IMF.

The BRICS intend to court the Mexican government at the July 2025 summit in Rio de Jeneiro and there is also talk of European nations increasing trade with China as a way to frustrate Trump’s tariff efforts. But again, China’s economy is currently flirting with deflationary disaster and there’s not a single nation or group of nations that will be able to fill the void in consumer markets left behind by the US.

Even though a Chinese-based solution is unlikely, the behavior of the BRICS indicates that there is some kind of plan afoot. China and India have been stockpiling massive gold reserves and this may be in preparation for a break from the dollar, with gold skyrocketing as the dollar falls. The ongoing shift into crypto and CBDCs is also, I believe, an attempt to create a cushion for de-dollerization.

Just remember that none of this is possible without globalist organizations facilitating the spread of the technology. The BIS has been particularly active the past 5 years in testing cross-border CBDC swaps and secure CBDC transactions. The BRICS would be nothing more than a vehicle for the proliferation of a globalist CBDC reset.

Does this mean that the US and Trump are falling into a trap? Do tariffs make it easier to justify an international shift way from the dollar? Is Trump making things easier for the globalists? I argue that this reset is going to be attempted regardless; Trump and conservatives are going to be blamed regardless. Americans will blame the BRICS and Europe – The BRICS and Europe will blame America.

It should also be noted that the middle class and poverty stricken citizens of China and Europe largely HATE their governments. The elites have abused them beyond all measure and what little freedoms they have left are being erased. Most of these people are on the side of anti-globalism. This war is not everyone in the world against the US, though the corporate media would have you believe this is the case.

Tariffs are a way for the US to disrupt the forced interdependency of globalism, but there’s going to be pain involved as things change. In other words, tariffs are necessary. The end of globalism is necessary. America needs to stop relying on the dollar’s reserve status and the global supply chain. But we should be wary of what kind of system ends up replacing the Bretton Woods structure. Meaning, we may have to use any means at our disposal to stop a new global monetary scheme before it can take hold.

The next BRICS Summit should be scrutinized carefully because it could give us insight into when the next stage of the “reset” will begin. Don’t be surprised if their rhetoric is wildly hostile towards the US and decoupling from the dollar is the main topic of discussion. Also don’t be surprised if “de-dollarization” becomes a household term in the next couple of years.

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