The Trump administration’s aggressive tariff policy is reshaping the global order. Yet not only in the intended way. It may be winning the economic battle in the short term and losing the geopolitical war in the long term. The countries of the global south—that is to say, the global majority—who advocate for multipolarity are standing up to U.S. hegemony in a manner perhaps not seen before. And India is at the center.
On Thursday, new tariffs went into effect on more than 90 countries, with an average rate of 18 percent. But some of the biggest tariffs were imposed on the original BRICS nations in, as the New York Times put it, “a form of geopolitical punishment” for resisting U.S. hegemony, namely by economically supporting Russia in its war against Ukraine.
Brazil has been hit with 50 percent tariffs on U.S. exports. India has been hit with 50 percent and, along with China, is expected to be hit with even more if they refuse the U.S. demand to stop purchasing Russian oil. South Africa has been hit with 30 percent, the highest rate in Africa.
But in an important test of multipolarity, the BRICS nations are refusing to cave in to U.S. demands. A key advisor to Brazil’s President Lula da Silva has said that the U.S wanted to impose bilateral negotiations and that emphasizing the multipolar world order, which Trump’s strategy is putting at risk, is very important.
Brazil said no to the United States, reminding the U.S. that “Brazil is a sovereign nation.” China, too, refused to capitulate, reminding the U.S. that it is a sovereign nation. China’s Foreign Ministry Spokesman Guo Jiakun said that “China will take energy supply measures that are right for China based on our national interests. Tariff wars have no winners. Coercion and pressuring cannot solve problems. China will firmly safeguard its own sovereignty, security and development interests.”
South Africa, too, has resisted U.S. pressure. “If the US imposes high tariffs,” South Africa’s minister of mineral and petroleum resources said, “we must look for alternative markets. Our biggest trading partner is China, not the US.” In response to the new U.S. tariffs on Africa, the Nigerian economist Bismarck Rewane told CNN that Africa is “going straight into the hands of China.”
India in particular holds a special place in U.S. foreign policy and American designs for maintaining a unipolar world. From the American perspective, in the global battle between the U.S.-led unipolar world and the multipolar world preferred by Russia and China, India is the giant with one foot in each order. A friend and major trading partner for both the U.S. and Russia, India is a member of both the Russian- and Chinese-led BRICS and the U.S.-led QUAD. By American lights, the choice the world’s largest nation makes will determine whether the unipolar world survives or evolution favors multipolarity.
But, to India, the meaning of multipolarity is not having to make that choice. In his book, The India Way, India’s foreign minister, S. Jaishankar, explains that multipolarity means that countries can deal “with contesting parties at the same time with optimal results” for their “own self-interest.”
On Wednesday, “Trump all but declared economic war against India,” as the New York Times described it, by announcing the 25 percent “punitive tariff for India’s purchases of Russian oil.”
In a pointed rebuke to U.S. attempts to force India to choose sides and abandon Russia, on the heels of the U.S. doubling tariffs on India, India’s National Security Advisor Ajit Doval announced that Russia’s President Vladimir Putin would visit India by the end of this year. In expressing India’s “delight” over Putin’s upcoming visit, Doval added that India and Russia “have a very special relationship, long relationship, and we highly value our strategic partnership.”
Meanwhile, the U.S. has made it clear that tariffs are an instrument to force India to choose sides. Secretary of State Marco Rubio said that India “buys [oil] from Russia…. And that – unfortunately that is helping to sustain the Russian war effort. So it is most certainly a point of irritation in our relationship with India.” The White House confirmed “that it is not acceptable for India to continue financing this war by purchasing the oil from Russia.” Trump’s executive order on Wednesday announcing further tariffs on India says India is “currently directly or indirectly importing Russian Federation oil,” and says it is “necessary and appropriate” to apply the new 25 percent tariff on Indian goods.”
India has refused to retreat in the face of the U.S. weaponization of the economy, making it clear that they will continue to purchase oil from Russia. India’s Foreign Ministry says that “the government is committed to prioritizing the welfare of Indian consumers. Our energy purchases will be based on price, availability and market conditions.” In a statement released August 4, the Indian Ministry of External Affairs said that the tariffs on India are “unjustified” and insisted that “India will take necessary measures to safeguard its national interests and economic security.”
Despite hopes that India would join the U.S.-led world order, abandon Russia and its war in Ukraine and act as a powerful counterweight to China, the punitive tariffs now establish India “as a political enemy” of the United States. The cost of that move in terms of U.S. plans for the unipolar world order could far outweigh the economic benefits.
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Instead of pulling India further into sympathy with the U.S. orbit, the harsh tariffs risk pushing India into closer economic ties with its BRICS partners. Later this month, India’s Prime Minister Narendra Modi will travel to China for the first time in more than seven years to attend the Shanghai Cooperation Organization summit. Like BRICS, the SCO, which includes Russia and China, is a large international organization whose primary purpose is to balance U.S. hegemony in the new multipolar world. An Indian government source said that, while “India needs to gradually repair ties with the US,” it simultaneously needs to be “engaging more with other nations that have faced the brunt of Trump tariffs and aid cuts, including… the BRICS bloc, which includes Brazil, Russia, China and South Africa.”
Rajneesh Sharma, a Securities and Exchange Board of India–registered analyst, says that the new tariffs have “nudged historical rivals India and China, toward an increasingly pragmatic alignment.” Both important members of BRICS, Sharma says the tariffs “could lead to India and China bridging their differences.” He says that Trump’s tariffs could become “the spark that accelerated the global power shift, which is already underway.”
The Trump administration tried to strongarm India into the U.S.-led unipolar camp. India stood firm in its multipolar camp. Along with BRICS partners Brazil, China and South Africa, India refused to succumb to U.S. attempts at hegemony. Trump’s tariffs may win short-term economic gains for the United States, but in one of the first and biggest tests of the world order under Trump, they risk losing the long-term geopolitical battle to shape the world order according to American designs.
