BRICS Are Heavy

Friday morning's 1440 News mailing greeted me with the plain-vanilla headline "BRICS Expansion." Plain-vanilla, that is, unless you know what the BRICS are.

I've referred to the BRICS many times in blogging about global warming remediation efforts, specifically that brute-force decarbonizing is folly given that Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa (thus, BRICS) are not going to play that form of economic suicide.

But, the BRICS are not just an agglomeration of five significant emerging economies. In the past decade and a half, the five nations have worked together to serve as an economic counterweight to the West. With 27% of the world's GDP and 41% of the globe's population, the BRICS are "real and significant," to borrow from the global warming lexicon.

As of January 1, 2024, the economic alliance, as it is described, will expand to include Argentina, Egypt, Ethiopia, Iran, Saudi Arabia, and the United Arab Emirates.

Combined, the bloc will comprise 30% of the global economy and nearly half its population. Notably as well, the bloc now contains some of the world's biggest oil exporters. If anything, the BRICS are even less likely to engage in the rush to decarbonization that has obsessed America and parts of Europe.

The concern extends beyond climate change remediation, however. Generally speaking, the BRICS, OG and expanded, aren't natural allies to America and the West. Trading partners, certainly, but more competitor than compatriot, and not just economically. China has been aspiring toward global political power and influence for decades, for one, India and Brazil are flexing, the House of Saud has spent vast sums of money to spread Wahhabism around the globe, and the Emirates (an agglomeration of 7 states), despite being only about the size of South Carolina, is sixth in global oil exporting and a global financial hub.

Meanwhile, domestically, America continues to spend recklessly, destroying wealth via inflation. Tariffs make consumer goods more expensive, destroying more wealth. Ever-more regulations (many in service to the "green" god) force consumers into purchasing less utile and more expensive appliances, vehicles, and other goods, destroying (see: Broken Window and Cash For Clunkers) more wealth. Trade protectionism beyond tariffs, restrictions on resource harvesting, and on and on and on, all serve to make our dollars less valuable, our income less useful, and our savings more ephemeral.

For years, those inclined to doomsaying have added the dollar losing its global reserve-currency status to their dumpsters-full of predictions. I've long been skeptical, because all the alternatives have sucked. However, as this (and previous) administration continues to suck the life out of the dollar in myriad ways, the alternatives are sucking less every day.

The expansion of the BRICS bloc should be heeded as a warning, but it won't. Far too few Americans are interested in free trade any more, and far too few take endless deficit spending and the colossal national debt seriously. Both Team Red and Team Blue are on the wrong side of those matters. And, while Team Red squawks about Team Blue's energy suicide pact and the correlated wars on cars, appliances, and other consumer goods, it's hard to take them seriously when they spend like drunken sailors whenever they take the reins of Congress.