Panel discussion of the unanimously approved BRICS summit declaration: News X World

I had hoped that yesterday’s panel discussion of the BRICS summit declaration on News X World would have been posted on the internet as a podcast and that I could share it with the Community because my fellow panelists were of high quality and the discussion was especially informative. It was a pleasure to be in the company of the Indian major general with whom I fairly often share time on News X hourly bulletins, all the more so as he gave his support to my critical remarks on the shortcomings of the summit in addressing the threat posed to the organization’s very existence by Donald Trump.

I mentioned in that discussion yesterday that the entire proceedings brought to mind the line in the Harry Potter novels about The One whose name cannot be uttered, in this case Donald Trump. It is not the Collective West or the G7 which is making war on BRICS. It is the American President from his very first months in office when he imposed severe tariffs on all 5 founding members of BRICS for various reasons – racial discrimination against white farmers in South Africa, arbitrary arrest in the case of former president Bolsinaro in Brazil, and India and China for trading with the already sanctioned Russia.

My fellow panelists argued that pointing a finger at Donald would not be proper. Certainly, it would not be diplomatic and so would violate the overall spirit of the summit. However, I insist that they should have identified the issue if not the man: there should have been in their closing document the declaration that BRICS countries will engage with one another commercially, culturally and in other manner as it suits them, not subject to the dictates of outside powers. Such a joint decision would clear the air and firm up the backbone of member states when they come under pressure from the US to do this or that.

In this panel discussion yesterday there was also cross-talk on the question of trading in national currencies and on the shared objective of raising trade between BRICS member countries. However, this willfully ignores the insuperable problems when trade balances between given countries are extremely unbalanced. It does not begin to deal with the issue of why there are such imbalances and whether they can be corrected.

I insist that the whole question of trade in national currencies has to be dealt with in a transparent manner, which is not the case today. When trade flows are close to being in balance, as for example between Russia and China, then trade in national currencies works fine. When they are completely unbalanced, as between Russia and India or between China and India, you have to ask why that is so. And very likely you will find that the respective economies are not and cannot be mutually complementary under present circumstances and for the foreseeable future. In that case, it is pointless to make declarations about the desirability of trade in national currencies. That can only result in the accumulation of vast amounts of the nonconvertible currency of one party in the bank of the other. A pointless exercise.

I make the same point, by the way, with respect to all the talk promoted by Kushner and Witkoff, on one side and by Dmitriev on the other side with respect to prospects for Russia-USA trade. There is no prospect for BIG BUSINESS because the economies are not and will not be mutually complementary; rather they are largely competitive with one another in many of the same domains.

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Regrettably, it seems that yesterday’s discussion was not uploaded as a podcast, whereas today’s similar panel discussion on News X Live was. Accordingly, as we say in Belgium – selon le marché - I offer here today’s discussion instead. The fellow panelists are different, but nonetheless it provides an insight into the thinking of Indian experts. The distrust of China that comes out in the remarks of several of them is endemic in Indian elites.