New Delhi: At Monday’s (September 8) BRICS virtual summit, external affairs minister S. Jaishankar called for “shorter supply chains,” flagged India’s trade “deficits” with bloc partners and urged diplomacy on conflicts, even as Brazil railed against “tariff blackmail” and China denounced “tariff wars.”

No explanation has been given for Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s absence from the session convened by Brazil, which came barely a week after images showed him in animated conversation with Xi and Putin at the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation summit. Only India and Ethiopia were represented by foreign ministers, while other leaders, including Chinese President Xi Jinping and Russian President Vladimir Putin, joined directly.

While other member states used the platform to sharply criticise Washington’s tariff measures, albeit without naming the United States, Jaishankar framed India’s intervention around wider global challenges. 

He said the cumulative effect of the pandemic, the wars in Ukraine and West Asia, financial volatility, climate extremes and the slowdown in the UN’s development agenda had exposed failures in the multilateral system.

“Trade patterns and market access are today prominent issues in the global economic discourse,” he said, warning that “increasing barriers and complicating transactions will not help. Neither would the linking of trade measures to non-trade matters.” This was the only passage that could be read as an implicit criticism of Washington’s 50% tariff on Indian goods, imposed in part as “reciprocal” duties and over continued imports of Russian oil.

But immediately after this mild rebuke, he turned attention back to the bloc itself. “Some of our biggest deficits are with BRICS partners and we have been pressing for expeditious solutions,” he said.

Jaishankar also pushed for “more resilient, reliable, redundant and shorter supply chains,” language closely associated with Western “de-risking” strategies that India has also advanced. “It is also essential that we democratise manufacturing and production and encourage their growth in different geographies,” he added.

He added that while stabilising the international economy remained central, it was just as important to turn to conflicts because “they have direct developmental and supply chain implications.”

Conflicts, he warned, were worsening food, energy and fertiliser insecurity for the Global South, with attacks on shipping threatening livelihoods as well as commerce. “A selective protection cannot be a global answer,” he said, stressing diplomacy and “an early end to hostilities” as the only durable pathway.

He also highlighted gridlocks in international organisations, saying they had undermined the search for consensus on key issues.

“These experiences have only made the case for reformed multilateralism generally, and that of the United Nations and its Security Council specifically, more urgent,” he said. India has long pressed for an expanded role at the UN, and Jaishankar told BRICS partners that the grouping should collectively be “a strong voice for much awaited change.”

Opening the summit, Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva struck a sharper note. “Our countries have become victims of unjustified and illegal trade practices,” he said. 

“Tariff blackmail is being normalised as an instrument for conquering markets and interfering in domestic issues. The imposition of extraterritorial measures threatens our institutions. Secondary sanctions restrict our freedom to strengthen trade with friendly countries. Dividing to conquer is the strategy of unilateralism.”

Brazil, like India, has been hit with 50% tariffs, a penalty tied by US President Donald Trump to what he called a “witchhunt” against his ally, former president Jair Bolsonaro, who is on trial for plotting a coup.

Lula told BRICS it was up to the bloc to prove that “cooperation overcomes any form of rivalry.”

Chinese President Xi Jinping was equally blunt. “Trade wars and tariff wars waged by some country severely disrupt the world economy and undermine international trade rules,” he said. “Countries cannot thrive without an international environment of open cooperation, and no country can afford to retreat to self-imposed isolation.”

South Africa’s Cyril Ramaphosa warned that “unilateral tariff actions” were a “danger for the countries of the Global South.” “The uncertainty of the new trading regime has already negatively affected employment levels in my own country South Africa and is an obstacle to our economic growth,” he stated.

He urged the bloc of emerging countries to “move from crisis management to strategic action” and demonstrate that “consensus is built through negotiation and not through coercion.”

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