Brazil Hosts BRICS Leaders’ Summit in Rio

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The most prominent events this week: Brazil is preparing to host The summit of the leaders of the BrexesBolivia embraces Coded Amid an economic crisis, Mercosur a A new business deal.

The BRICS Leaders’ summit begins this week in Rio de Janeiro. The emerging economy group has increasingly related to global policy has become in recent years. But it is also more unbridled than ever.

Bricks expanded from five to nine members in 2024 and added Indonesia this year. (The abbreviation represents the bearers of Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa. The Kingdom has not yet accepted its official membership. Ten other countries have an official “country partner” case. A more bunch of Brazil’s top as guests, including Mexico.

Expansion is partially responsible for developing the dispute within the mass. At April Foreign Ministers Summit, Egypt and Ethiopia prevented a declaration supporting South Africa’s ambitions to obtain a permanent seat in the United Nations Security Council.

But political differences did not relieve the importance of the group. On the contrary: Many countries have sought to obtain the BRICS affiliations as a way to diversify their trade and political relations, amid the inability to predict US President Donald Trump.

Officials all over the world ask themselves: “Outside the United States, what can we do for moderate to long distances?” Sarang Shidor, director of the South Queens International Institute program, said. While “the mood in Washington is hostile to trade”, he added that the BRICS is “the closest thing we have to a multilateral knot to an alternative to the place where the superpower is going.”

The United Arab Emirates is one of the new bloc members. “The BRICS brings together the large and rapid consumer markets throughout Asia, Africa and Latin America.” Foreign policy. He added that the membership gave the country “more varied to important economies.”

The Brazilian Presidency throughout the year is an opportunity for the country to place its seal on the group. While Brex often attracts the Western West to its stances on wars in Gaza, Iran and Ukraine, the Brazilian Summit’s agenda focuses on economic development, especially climate financing.

Brazil’s goals include the establishment of new loan guarantees from the BRICS Development Bank, based in the new Development Bank, based in Shanghai, according to Tatiana Rossito, the Ministry of Finance official at the Ministry of Finance. Fulha de S. Paulo. The new Development Bank focuses on infrastructure, sustainability and local currency operations.

Rosetto added that Brazil will also try to get rid of the differences in the climate policy between its members before the United Nations COP30 in November in the city of Bilim Amazon. At the Summit of the United Nations Biological Diversity earlier this year, the BRICS countries made a joint proposal as a basis for the final summit decision on global financing for nature protection.

Although BRICS is not officially negotiating as a bloc in the United Nations climatic summits, “We look forward to building rapprochement,” said Rosetto. Russia was a consistent opposition to the language about moving away from fossil fuels.

Progress in economic cooperation and climate will support the argument that Brazil and India have long achieved it to the BRICS critics: the bloc is not related to the opposition of the West, but rather supports developing countries. (China and Russia are more comfortable with explicit western tilt.)

Whether Brazil succeeds in forming the BRICS agend, it will be difficult to judge at one top. Many of the value of the group lies at a time when senior officials from different countries are allowed. Shidor told the BRICS events “a place where ideas can be tested and discussed” Foreign policy. Parallel private sector events can also lead to new commercial communications.

If the group increases its concentration, it may achieve more than just speaking. Shidor pointed out that one of the most concrete achievements of Brexis – the new Development Bank – has grown much slower than a similar lender that was established at the same time, which is the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank. The former announced plans to lend only about 5 billion dollars in 2024, while the latter loaned more than $ 8 billion.

Like Brex itself, the new Development Bank has attracted new members in recent months, with Colombia, Uzbekistan and Indonesia in the joining process. Uzbekistan is a partner country in the Brexes, while Colombia is not an official member of the BRICS or a partner country.

In the past, these countries have sought lenders such as the World Bank or the International Monetary Fund. But the United States is the largest contributor to both, and the Trump administration has indicated that it may push its effect on the veto against some lending.

Friday, July 4, to Saturday, July 5: Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi visits Argentina.

Saturday, July 5: The United States’ temporary reserve status ends for the beneficiaries of Nicaragua and Honduras.

Sunday, July 6, to Monday, July 7: Brazil hosts the summit of the BRICS leaders.

Merkosor’s latest commercial deal. After the end of commercial talks with the European Union last December, MERCOSUR announced on Wednesday that it had concluded another European trade deal. This is one with the European Free Trade Association (EFTA), a group of four non -European Union countries: Iceland, Liechtenstein, Norway, and Switzerland.

Like the European Union deal, the EFTA agreement was for years. Leaders gave priority in the wake of Trump’s protectionism, and still faces internal approval in EFTA and Mercosur member states. But the Efta deal does not seem to face the same level of resistance from the European agricultural sectors that strengthened the European Union deal.

While French farmers may prevent the European Union Convention, the Minister of Economic Affairs of Switzerland said at a press conference at Buenos Aires that the Mercosur deal is a “complete priority for EFTA countries”. This will remove commercial barriers to more than 97 percent of exports, according to the EFTA-MRCOSUR joint statement.

Bitcoin in Bolivia. El Salvador is known as the largest defender of coding currencies in the Western hemisphere. But another country in the Americas was recently affected – unexpectedly – to embrace it: Bolivia.

For many years, the Bolivon Organizers have taken a conservative position on the cryptocurrency. But amid a deep economic crisis and with the precautions of the dwindling dollar, they reflected the path last year and allowed encrypted currencies for the first time.

In March, the government energy company said it would start using the cryptocurrency to pay the costs of energy imports. Last Friday, the central bank in Bolivia said that transactions that use electronic payment channels and virtual assets have grown more than 500 percent between the first half of 2024 and the first half of 2025.

While the use of cryptocurrencies may allow Bolivians to perform some businesses, it does not address greater economic problems. The annual inflation in the country reached more than 18 percent in May, and the informal exchange rate of local currency decreased by about 50 percent against the dollar this year alone. Amid this volatility, Bolivia is scheduled to hold the presidential elections next month.

American security strategy. Two modern events provide glimpses of the Trump administration’s strategy to combat organized crime in Latin America.

Ecuador and the United States have cooperated with crime combat efforts since 2024. The United States has helped the Ecuadorian intelligence officers in the process of tracking the fugitive drug chief Jose Adolvo “Vito” Villarr, Washington Post It was reported; Last Wednesday, he was captured. While US security assistance is often applying the law in the region, no one was killed during the detention of Veto.

In Mexico, the United States tested a different approach. Also last Wednesday, the Treasury Ministry banned some American transactions with three Mexican financial institutions – between banks between banks and a single mediation company – which led to assistance in transferring funds in order to smuggle fentanel. Each of the banks is less than 1 percent of the financial system in Mexico.

The sanctions came as a shock to the Mexican government. President Claudia Shinbom said Mexico has received insufficient evidence about the violations of the alleged banks.

Cuban arts and craftsman cleans a street in front of his work decorated with a poster for former Cuban President Raul Castro on his 94th birthday in Havana on June 3.Yamil Lage/AFP via Getty Images

This week, Trump has ordered senior officials to study how economic restrictions on Cuba are tightened, and perhaps through widespread secondary sanctions. Foreign Minister Marco Rubio, a Cuban origin, has long been honest for his desire to overthrow the ruling Communist government. But contracts from the American economic war have failed to make a change in the system.

Given the solid nature of Cuba’s policy today, it is striking that Washington has tried a significantly different approach for a decade, during the era of President Barack Obama.

New offer from Foreign policyThe Podcast team separates the secret talks that led to the melting of the political ice between Havana and Washington in December 2014. It was produced with an audible entertainment and Skybound, hearing the offer directly from many heroes who participated in diplomacy. Because of decades of hostility between the two countries, it took Obama himself to persuade the Cubans that the United States was serious about improving relations.

The deal included the most famous measures of construction of secret confidence, including a very unusual episode of “vaccine diplomacy”, the FP saying from Dan Ephron, the exhibition host. US officials facilitated the transfer of sperm from a Cuban spy who was imprisoned in the United States, allowing his wife in Cuba to become pregnant. In 2015 and 2016, Rapproment brought a set of new attention from American companies in the island’s business.

Trump retracted the agreement in his first term, pledging to retract many Obama’s policies. The former Obama adviser, Ben Rhodes Everon, told Cuba-United States to cut the “worst aspects” in the foreign policy of each country. “We will harm individuals because we are angry at something that happened 60 years ago or 70 years ago,” said Rhodes.