While Brazil's interest in BRICS appears to be waning, looking ahead, the BRICS will remain a useful mirror that reflects back to Brazilian comparisons with China and India economic factors that drive productivity and competitiveness in an increasingly integrated world economy, writes Paulo Sotero.
The alleged demise of the BRICS is viewed in Brazil with the same caution diplomats and foreign policy experts greeted the group’s emergence in the global scene a decade ago. At best, the BRICS were seen by Brazilian diplomats and scholars as a useful mechanism to project Brazil internationally in a rapidly changing global landscape. However, as the economies of Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa lost speed and altitude over the past two years, the difficulties of articulating their conflicting interests in some sort of common vision became more evident.
President Dilma Rousseff’s decision to forgo this year’s New Delhi summit of IBSA, a subset of the BRICS formed ten years ago by its three democracies, is a good indication of the loss of interest for this sort of arrangement.
The Brazil Institute—the only country-specific policy institution focused on Brazil in Washington—aims to deepen understanding of Brazil’s complex landscape and strengthen relations between Brazilian and US institutions across all sectors. Read more
