NPR

Earlier this month, 10 men in formal ware held hands by the shores of Rio de Janeiro.

Behind were plunging mountains and enormous white letters

spelling bricks, BRICS. These men were leaders and representatives of Brazil, Russia, India, China,

and South Africa, plus several other countries. They were there for the 2025 Bricks summit.

Yeah, Indian Prime Minister Modi was there.

Brazilian President Lula in a red tie looking very chival.

The summit produced lofty words, of course.

Nice words about global health and international law.

And stern words for Israel and the U.S. for their attacks on Iran and condemnation for Israel

over the war in Gaza.

Back in the U.S., President Trump was seething.

At a cabinet meeting, he threatened members with an additional 10% tariff.

Because bricks was set up to hurt us.

Bricks was set up to degenerate our dollar and take our dollar as the standard, take it off as the standard.

So was Bricks set up as an anti-American project to replace the dollar in global reserves?

Jim O'Neill says that's a misunderstanding.

To me now, it's just idiotically blatantly obvious.

How can you solve truly global issues if you don't have the countries that are driving global growth sitting at the table?

Jim is a British economist, and actually the guy who came up with the Brick's acronym back in 2001. But his original

vision has morphed into something quite different. This is the indicator from Planet Money.

I'm Adrienne Ma. And I'm Daryne Woods. They're on the show, The Brick House that Jim built,

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