PM to skip Brics meet on Trump tariffs, Brazil's Lula is hosting

NEW DELHI: India will be represented in the Brics leaders' virtual summit that Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva will convene on Sept 8 by external affairs minister S Jaishankar, and not PM Narendra Modi.

The leaders' meeting will discuss ways to deal with Trump's tariffs, along with efforts to boost multilateralism, and may be followed by a joint statement. The ministry of external affairs (MEA) said Friday that Jaishankar will join the virtual summit.Brazil is not projecting it as an anti-US summit, but Modi's decision to skip the event, even as India prepares to assume the Brics presidency next year, suggests an effort to balance out his participation in the SCO summit that was seen as a reassertion of India's strategic autonomy in the middle of a trade crisis with Washington.Launching into another rant against India for its participation in Brics, US secretary of commerce Howard Lutnick said Friday India should either support the dollar and the US, or be ready to pay a 50% tariff. Ironically, within Brics, India has always emphatically rejected the idea of de-dollarisation, maintaining it's not a part of its strategy.Modi's show of camaraderie with Chinese President Xi Jinping and his Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin on the margins of SCO summit in Tianjin also vindicated the point many have made about Trump driving India into the arms of China with his trade policy.

However, as MEA reiterated Friday, India sees its relationship with the US as important and will continue to pursue the substantive agenda that both countries have committed to, hoping that the relationship will continue to move forward based on mutual respect and shared interests. India has stressed on the significance of mutual respect in the relationship, as senior Trump administration officials' launch frequently into anti-India tirades.While both Brazil and India have been slapped with 50% tariffs by the US president, in Brazil's case it's more about political vengeance than trade. Trump has targeted Brazil for the prosecution of his political ally, right-wing leader and former president Jair Bolsonaro. Trump has imposed an additional 25% tariff on India for its purchase of Russian crude. Brazil has so far not announced the names of other leaders who will join the meeting.