New Delhi: Just a week after Prime Minister Narendra Modi was seen in widely circulated images with Russian President Vladimir Putin and Chinese President Xi Jinping, he will not join the BRICS virtual summit next week on multilateralism, which will also deliberate on the US president’s tariff measures.

“This virtual meeting will happen on [September 8]. From our side, it will be the external affairs minister who will be participating in it. This big summit is at the leaders' level,” said external affairs ministry spokesperson Randhir Jaiswal at the weekly briefing on Friday (September 5).

The absence of Modi at the virtual meeting will be conspicuous as the images of him standing and laughing next to Xi and Putin were widely shared as a sign of India’s deepening engagement with China and Russia in the wake of Donald Trump’s sweeping trade tariffs.

While there was no public reason given for the PM’s absence, it is part of New Delhi’s balancing act, as per sources, especially after the reception to his participation in the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO) summit.

The Trump administration has imposed 50% tariffs on Indian imports – half under a so-called reciprocal tariff, with the rest a penalty for buying Russian oil.

India has termed the additional 25% tariff for oil imports as “unjustified”, arguing that New Delhi has been singled out while China, the US and Europe continue to trade with Moscow.

Brazil’s President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva is convening the call of BRICS leaders to discuss Trump’s tariff policy.

According to Brazilian officials, Lula wants the discussion to extend beyond tariffs to building consensus among the bloc’s major emerging economies in support of multilateralism.

They stressed, however, that Brasilia does not want the meeting to turn into an explicitly anti-US platform.

The backdrop is Brazil’s own clash with Washington. In July, Trump threatened higher tariffs on the country unless its Supreme Court halted the trial of former President Jair Bolsonaro on coup-related charges. Brazil is now subject to 50% tariffs, though the US has exempted some goods such as airplanes and orange juice.

Differences in the tariff regimes imposed on BRICS members have made it harder for the group to coordinate a joint response, Bloomberg reported, citing unnamed Brazilian officials. They stated that Modi’s closeness to Trump was seen within BRICS as a stumbling block to taking a stronger stand against tariffs at the leaders’ summit in July.

In Washington, Trump’s reaction to the SCO summit was swift. Earlier this week, he posted on Truth Social that “India buys most of its oil and military products from Russia, very little from the U.S.,” echoing his longstanding complaints about the Indo-US trade deficit.

On Friday, he escalated his criticism, declaring that the US had “lost India and Russia to deepest, darkest China” and wishing them a “long and prosperous future together”.

Howard Lutnick, the US commerce secretary, reinforced that message in an interview with Bloomberg Television on Friday, taking direct aim at the grouping itself.

“India doesn’t yet want to open their market, stop buying Russian oil, right, and stop being a part of BRICS, right, they’re the vowel between Russia and China. If that’s who you want to be, go be it,” he said.

The US president has repeatedly targeted BRICS in his rhetoric. In July, he warned that any country aligning with what he called the bloc’s “anti-American policies” would face an additional 10% tariff. Last month, he dismissed the grouping as a “little group” bent on undermining the dollar, threatening more penalties if members pursued efforts to trade in local currencies.

India has consistently maintained that de-dollarisation is not part of its agenda. At a weekly briefing last month, the external affairs ministry made it clear that “de-dollarisation is not part of India’s financial agenda”, while acknowledging that BRICS members have explored local-currency cross-border trade.

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