NEW DELHI: A week after US President-elect Donald Trump threatened the BRICS countries (Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa) of consequences if they moved away from the dollar as trade currency, External Affairs Minister S Jaishankar today said the BRICS countries have no interest in weakening the US dollar at all.
He was speaking at an event in Qatar’s capital Doha on Saturday. The minister said: “I am not exactly sure what was the trigger for it (Trump’s reaction ) but we’ve always said that India has never been for de-dollarisation. Right now, there is no proposal to have a BRICS currency.”
He explained how countries in BRICS don’t have an identical position on the issue. His remarks came a week after Donald Trump demanded that BRICS member countries must commit not to create a new currency or support another currency that would replace the dollar or face 100 per cent tariffs.
In a post on the social platform ‘Truth Social’ on November 30, Trump wrote, “We demand a commitment from these countries that they will neither create a new BRICS currency nor support any alternative currency to replace the mighty US dollar, or they will face 100 per cent tariffs.”
On Friday, Reserve Bank of India (RBI) Governor Shaktikanta Das also clarified that India had not taken any concrete steps towards de-dollarisation and the primary focus had been on de-risking domestic trade from potential geo-political disruptions.
Jaishankar also called for “more innovative and participative diplomacy” and said the needle was moving towards the reality of negotiations rather than the continuation of the war between Russia and Ukraine.
He is in Doha to participate in the Doha Forum at the invitation of Prime Minister and Minister of Foreign Affairs of Qatar, Mohammed bin Abdulrahman. He was addressing a panel along with the Qatari Prime Minister and Norway’s Foreign Minister Espen Barth Eide.
He said India was walking the talk, by going to Moscow, talking to President Vladimir Putin, going to Kyiv, engaging President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, and transparently carrying messages to each other.