I'm John Vatchel with my colleague Gregory Copley, defense and foreign affairs.

President Donald Trump has threatened additional tariffs on any countries that supports the,

quote, anti-American policies of the BRICS Group, writes Time magazine.

The quote from the president in Truth Social, I believe it was Sunday night, two days ago.

Any country aligning themselves with the anti-American policies of BRICS will be charged in an additional 10% tariff.

There will be no exceptions to this policy.

The BRICS, Brazil, Russia, India, China, South Africa, and others who have joined, including Iran, and I believe

Venezuela was a member or candidate member, have been meeting in Rio de Janeiro, except

Xi Jinping, we just mentioned him, did not attend, except Vladimir Putin did not attend.

There were some other dignitaries.

Is the Bricks best years behind it, Gregory? Is that

what's happened? Yes, that is absolutely correct. And if they were the best years, God knows what

the worst years are going to look like, because it really never took off. Yes, it was a reflection

of many countries' desire to stop being forced into dollarization

and to be run by U.S. law, which is what the use of dollars ostensibly gave the U.S.

the power to control.

In other words, if you did a deal which involved U.S. dollars, then that meant under US law, and the US could then impose sanctions and the like against people for somehow breaking US law or appearing to break US law.

So people wanted an avenue other than the dollar.

And that wasn't necessarily because they disliked the United States.

They just didn't want to get caught in that whole US legal structure.

And that largely came about because of all of the sanctions which were put in place by the

U.S. against Russian and allied military political and military leaders and business people and against the

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