BRICS is an unusual alliance. Three of the bloc’s five initial members, Brazil, India and South Africa, are democracies. The other two, Russia and China, are autocracies. This ideological mismatch would normally prevent such an edifice from even getting off the ground. But it did, largely due to the collective disdain that the five nations harbor toward the Western-led world order, in particular its architect, the U.S.

In the last few years, BRICS has been trying desperately to establish a currency that its member countries hope to use to trade among themselves. The goal is to gradually shift away from the dollar, which those nations say the U.S. has weaponized against them. That initiative gained urgency after Russia’s foreign exchange reserves held in the West were frozen following its unprovoked invasion of Ukraine in early 2022. Progress on the common currency project has been slow, however. I have argued previously that the dream is likely to remain just that, at least for the foreseeable future, and may never even materialize.

President Trump, unsurprisingly, is not a fan of BRICS. His antipathy is mainly due to the open hostility of a majority of the alliance’s members toward the U.S. In a Truth Social post last weekend as the two-day BRICS summit got underway in Rio de Janeiro, President Trump wrote this: “Any Country aligning themselves with the Anti-American policies of BRICS, will be charged an ADDITIONAL 10% Tariff.” The president has in the past warned publicly that countries that try to replace the dollar as a reserve currency will be hit with a 100 percent tariff.

As a patriotic American, I share President Trump’s dislike for BRICS for its Americanophobia. But the thing I cannot stand the most about the alliance is the rank hypocrisy of its members. I admit, and have done so in previous writings, that we Americans are not saints. Some of our actions, both domestically and overseas, are not consistent with our stated values. We can and should do a lot better. But if the BRICS members are going to point fingers at our flaws and call us evil at every opportunity they find, then one would expect that they themselves would at least try to exhibit exemplary character. Not a single one of them is even remotely close to being a nation that could be held up as a paragon of virtue.

I am often amused by some of the things BRICS members say. A joint statement issued at the recent summit in Rio de Janeiro contained the following sentence: “We condemn the military strikes against the Islamic Republic of Iran since 13 June 2025, which constitute a violation of international law and the Charter of the United Nations.” Not every thought that enters a person’s mind is fit for publication. This is one such example and quite clearly, the alliance could use better editors.

The Islamic Republic of Iran that fellow BRICS members showed so much sympathy for in that statement happens to be the same nation that has supplied its Shahed-136 drones to Russia throughout its barbaric war in Ukraine. Those drones have killed and maimed thousands of Ukrainians whose only “crime” is having the temerity to desire the freedom and prosperity that come with living in a free and open society. I should be charged with the same crime then, since I came all the way from West Africa to join NATO. Do the Iranians, and their BRICS friends, think of international law and the UN Charter as they continue to actively take part in killing innocent civilians in a country that hadn’t attacked anyone?

While I have no love for BRICS, I wish President Trump would stop threatening its members so publicly. There is something quite unseemly about an “America first” president browbeating other countries for doing what they think are in their national interests. The president’s vocal expressions only bolster the narrative that America is a bully. It is the ammunition our adversaries are looking for to use against us.

If President Trump is worried about efforts by other countries to de-dollarize, then he should look no further than at himself, and think about how his own policies are serving as catalysts. The dollar’s status as the global reserve currency is a privilege that the U.S. earned over a long period of time by building the strongest and most dynamic economy in the world and strictly adhering to the rule of law. The president and his supporters, by their actions and words, have gravely weakened the pillars of that success.

President Trump’s erratic tariff policies, mistreatment of allies, insufficient respect for the judiciary, and constant threats to fire the Fed chairman, have all undermined the confidence that foreigners have always had in America as a safe haven. It is not only adversaries like the BRICS nations that are attempting to de-dollarize. There have been numerous reports in the financial press in the last few months about friendly countries diversifying some of their asset holdings away from the dollar into gold and other baskets of currencies. They are doing so because in their eyes, investing in America has become quite a bit riskier than it was previously. I’ve even heard a well-respected economic historian say recently that America is starting to look like an emerging market because of our increasingly unstable politics. Political instability is arguably the biggest driver of capital flight.

It is no secret that the BRICS bloc is trying its hardest to take down the U.S. and the rules-based world order it helped establish. The main focus of that project is to weaken or destroy the faith that the rest of the world has had in America for many decades. The best way to thwart those efforts is for the president to do whatever he can to burnish America’s image as the shining city on the hill that has always been a beacon of hope for millions around the world. Instead, he has taken his eyes off that ball while he pursues what is effectively an America-only agenda.