China-India Border Dispute, BRICS+, Russian Frozen Assets & U.S. Economic Decline

Weekly Recap as of October 27, 2024

Here are some recommendations for what you might have missed this week.

🌏 Without a doubt, the biggest event of the week was the historic BRICS+ summit in Kazan, Russia.

I’ve covered the event extensively over the course of the week:

• I spoke to one of the leading economic experts on the BRICS bloc, Yaroslav Lissovolik, who personally attended events held in Moscow as part of the BRICS+ initiatives.

  Yaroslav discussed the BRICS+ blockchain-based payment platform and the role that the Bank for International Settlements plays in the process. In the interview, he highlighted the fact that it would be best for the bloc to use a basket of local currencies instead of a single currency due to associated risks. He noted that once the blockchain platform is launched, central banks of sovereign states would play an active role in managing the system and its capabilities within each state. I had a great time speaking with Yaroslav and learning more about the economic aspects of the alliance.

  Watch the interview with Yaroslav Lissovolik on YouTube or Rumble.

  

• The BRICS+ bloc issued a Declaration in Kazan. Read more about its key points here.

• The bloc announced admission of 13 new partners, indicating its plans to expand in the near future as the full members conduct further consultations with these new partner-states to determine whether they are ready to become full-members. I recorded a very detailed video about the new partners and related future prospects. Watch the video on YouTube or Rumble.

• One of the newly admitted members of the BRICS bloc, the United Arab Emirates, has become Russia’s biggest trade partner in the Middle East. The trade between the two states tripled since 2021. This is quite fascinating considering that just several years ago, similar examples of South-South cooperation were rare. Watch the video with more details on YouTube or Rumble.

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🌏 Clearly, the BRICS summit and the recent developments that indicate a global shift towards multipolarity has the State Department concerned.

State Department spokesman Vedant Patel:

"Undermining the role of the dollar and developing alternatives to SWIFT is a direct threat to democracy in the world."

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🌏 This week the International Monetary Fund (finally!) shared an opinion on the policymakers’ obsession with protectionist measures.

“It’s a policy that is harming basically everyone,” Pierre-Olivier Gourinchas, the IMF’s top economist, said of the risk of higher trade barriers. “It’s harming the rest of the world. It’s harming the US.”

The IMF cautioned that if higher tariffs hit a “sizable portion” of world trade by mid-2025, it would wipe 0.8 percent from economic output next year and 1.3 percent in 2026.