The members of the BRICS bloc of major emerging economies have recently met to decide on adding new members and creating a common currency to challenge the United States dollar.
The five nations that make up BRICS – Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa – represent more than 40 percent of the global population, and their share of the world economy – when measured in purchasing power parity – outperforms that of the American-led G7 bloc.
Once viewed simply as a loose association of disparate emerging economies seeking to find a way to make it easier to sign trade deals with one another, BRICS has in recent years taken on a more concrete shape as an economic bloc that stands in opposition to the West.
The foreign ministers of BRICS met in South Africa on June 1 and 2 for a summit along with senior officials from more than a dozen other nations looking to forge closer links with the BRICS bloc, either by signing lucrative deals or by joining the group. (Related: BRICS to lay foundation for EXPANSION: 13 Nations formally asked to join group, 6 others expressed interest.)
Eight countries sent representatives to Cape Town for a talk with the BRICS bloc, known as the “Friends of BRICS” discussions. These eight are Comoros, Cuba, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Gabon, Iran, Kazakhstan, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates. Five other nations – Argentina, Bangladesh, Egypt, Guinea-Bissau and Indonesia – participated in the discussions virtually.
These are just some of the nations that have formally expressed their desire to join the bloc. Other prospecting nations include Mexico, Nigeria and Turkey.
Indian Foreign Minister Subrahmanyam Jaishankar remarked that some of the talks included deliberations on the guiding principles, standards, criteria and procedures of what an expanded BRICS bloc would look like. No set standards were released, as these are still a “work in progress,” according to Jaishankar.
South African Minister of Foreign Affairs Naledi Pandor said the foreign ministers were aiming to complete work on a framework for admitting new members and submitting them for the approval of BRICS leaders before they meet for a summit in Johannesburg, South Africa in August.
If the group does expand, BRICS is expected to provide other emerging economies with a platform to advocate for their interests and coordinate action contributing to each other’s economic growth. This will help BRICS in its ultimate goal of providing a credible alternative to the benefits offered by the current Western-led economic order.
BRICS to continue work on creating new currency
In light of the West’s weaponization of sanctions following Russia’s special military operation in Ukraine, BRICS has taken the lead in discussing creating a new currency that all member nations could use in international transactions.
The use of alternative currencies was among the prominent talking points during the recent BRICS meeting, with member nations discussing how this potential new currency could shield other member countries from the impact of Western sanctions.
Pandor noted that BRICS is looking to “ensure that we do not become victims to sanctions that have secondary effects on countries that have no involvement in issues that have led to those unilateral sanctions.”
Analysts have noted that BRICS members are also interested in pushing for a common currency to usher in a non-dollar-denominated world with multiple reserve currencies, which they believe would give them more autonomy in terms of internal policies. Without a common currency, for now, these nations are striving to sign trade agreements that settle payments in their own currencies.
India, for example, already has agreements with at least 18 countries, including Russia, to settle certain international transactions in Indian rupees. China has already signed currency swap deals with several nations, including Brazil, to allow them to conduct trade in the Chinese yuan to reduce the cost of bilateral trade and limit their exposure to fluctuations in the value of the American dollar.
In the New Development Bank, the Shanghai-based multinational bank created by BRICS, bank chief and former President of Brazil Dilma Rousseff revealed that the bank is gradually moving away from the dollar and is promising at least 30 percent of loans to be conducted in the local currencies of member states.
“It’s about financial independence and sovereignty,” said South African Ambassador to BRICS Anil Sooklal. “These countries want greater determination in terms of investments, trade and financing sources. They don’t have to be straitjacketed into a certain currency or financial institution.”
Several BRICS nations have already brought up proposals, which are being considered by officials at the New Development Bank. Pandor said the bloc “will be guided to them as to what the future model might be,” without providing any further details.
Learn more about the global shift away from primarily using the American dollar at DollarDemise.com.
Watch this video discussing BRICS’ potential expansion and its pitch for the creation of a common currency.
This video is from the Thrive Time Show channel on Brighteon.com.
More related stories:
- World moving on from US dollar amid failed Biden presidency as BRICS countries announce they will adopt their own currency.
- De-dollarization efforts continue: BRICS member nations to discuss COMMON CURRENCY in August meeting.
- Two dozen countries align against US dollar as BRICS alliance seeks to form new global currency.
- BRICS nations rapidly working to create common currency to counter US dollar’s global hegemony.
- Potential BRICS expansion could mark end of dollar as world’s pre-eminent currency.
Sources include:
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Two Storms, One Harvest
Every food crisis in living memory has been a one-shock event. The 2008 price spike was a commodity bubble. The 2020 shortages were a logistics failure. The 2022 grain scare was a war on one exporter’s ports. Each time, the system bent, adjusted, and recovered, and each time the experts assured us afterward that global markets are simply too big and too diversified to fail.
What nobody in Washington seems eager to discuss is that 2026 is shaping up to be something the modern food system has never actually faced. Two independent shocks, one climatic and one geopolitical, are converging on the same harvest cycle at the same time. Not sequentially. Simultaneously.
Start with the weather. The Pacific Ocean is currently building toward what forecasters now openly call a record event. NOAA’s Climate Prediction Center puts the odds of at least a strong El Niño near 88 percent, with roughly two in three odds it reaches “very strong” status, the tier reserved for perhaps three or four events in the entire satellite era. Every major global model now projects a median peak in Super El Niño territory, and most of them project it exceeding the 2015-16 event, which until now held the modern record. Sea surface anomalies were already brushing the super threshold in mid-July, months before these events normally peak. The atmosphere has already shifted into El Niño mode, and the event is forecast to crest in late fall and early winter.
This is not about “climate change.” It’s about the standard cycles of weather, and the cycle we’re currently in is one that has likely devastated societies in the past. We’re better prepared as a society today, but not all Americans are equally prepared.
Serious households have started doing the quiet math on their own. Grocery bills tell part of the story, and the forecast maps tell the rest, which is why long-term food storage has moved from fringe hobby to mainstream line item in the family budget, with established suppliers like Heaven’s Harvest seeing demand from people who five years ago would have rolled their eyes at the idea. That instinct is not paranoia. It is pattern recognition, and the pattern is worth walking through carefully.
Editor’s Note: Heaven’s Harvest IS a sponsor, but the warnings of this article are real and would be written even if we didn’t have a survival food sponsor. With that said, those who take advantage of what they offer can use promo code “Patriot” for 15% off.
The Fertilizer Clock Is Already Running
While the Pacific warms, the second shock has been unfolding in the Strait of Hormuz. The conflict with Iran turned the world’s most important energy chokepoint into a contested waterway, and the consequences reach far beyond the gas pump. Roughly a third of global fertilizer trade moves through Hormuz, and the disruption sent urea prices up 86 percent year over year by March, with a 53 percent jump in a single month.
The World Bank projects energy prices rising about 24 percent in 2026 and fertilizer about 31 percent. By its own accounting, fertilizer prices ran 35 percent higher in the first five months of this year than the same period last year.
Here is the mechanism the nightly news will not explain. Fertilizer is not a grocery item. It is a time-delayed input. The nitrogen a farmer in Iowa or Punjab could not afford to apply this spring does not show up as a problem this spring. It shows up as a thinner harvest six to twelve months later.
The World Bank’s own food security brief concedes that the effects of reduced applications earlier this season “are likely to become visible only later in harvest outcomes.” Translate that from institutional language into plain English and it means this. The damage is already done, it is already in the ground, and we are simply waiting for it to arrive on the shelf.
Now check the calendar. Six to twelve months from the spring planting season lands us squarely in late 2026 and early 2027. Which is precisely when the strongest El Niño in the instrumental record is forecast to peak, bringing its signature droughts to Southeast Asia, Australia, southern Africa, northern Brazil, and South Asia, the very regions that grow the world’s rice, sugar, and oilseeds.
The World Bank warns openly that a strong El Niño “could disrupt multiple crop belts simultaneously” on top of the conflict-driven input costs. Their baseline projection assumes the Middle East disruptions ease by autumn. What in the last two years of Middle East history suggests that assumption is safe?
The System Has No Slack Left
The comfortable answer is that global markets always adjust. But adjustment requires slack, and the slack is gone. Global cereal production is expected to decline from last year’s records even before El Niño does its work. The UN World Food Programme, hardly a den of right-wing preppers, is calling this the most significant disruption to its supply chains since Covid and the invasion of Ukraine, and its supply chain director put the stakes bluntly.
Today’s supply chain challenges are tomorrow’s hunger crisis.
There is also a political dimension that markets cannot price. When food gets scarce, governments do not behave like economists. They behave like politicians. Export bans, hoarding mandates, and panic buying at the national level turned the modest rice shortfall of 2008 into a global crisis, and analysts are already warning that import-dependent nations are the first dominoes.
The 2015-16 Super El Niño, a far weaker event than what is now forecast, threw tens of millions into food stress across Africa and Asia. This one is projected to be stronger, and it arrives with fertilizer already rationed by price and shipping lanes already contested by missiles.
What Joseph Knew
Scripture does not treat preparation for lean years as faithlessness. It treats it as wisdom delivered in advance to those willing to act on it.
Behold, there come seven years of great plenty throughout all the land of Egypt: And there shall arise after them seven years of famine; and all the plenty shall be forgotten in the land of Egypt.
Joseph did not respond to that warning with a hashtag or a committee. He stored grain during the years of abundance, and when the famine came, Egypt stood while its neighbors begged. The lesson is not that famine is certain. It is that the time to prepare is precisely when preparation still looks optional.
Nobody who filled a pantry in a year of plenty has ever regretted it, and nobody standing in an empty aisle has ever been glad he waited for certainty.
None of this calls for panic, and panic is the enemy of sound judgment anyway. It calls for the same unglamorous prudence our grandparents considered ordinary. Keep some cash margin, know your local growers, and put real food in deep storage while it is cheap and available, because the entire arc of this story is that cheap and available is a closing window.
Families looking for a straightforward place to start can visit Heaven’s Harvest and use promo code Patriot for 15 percent off long-term storable food. The forecasts may yet soften, the strait may yet reopen, and we should pray they do. But hope is a fine thing to hold and a foolish thing to eat.