SOCIAL POST: Trump Imposes 10% Tariffs on Iran, Saudi, UAE, Egypt, Algeria for Ties to BRICS
These measures are intended to pre-empt dedollarisation at the social level.
US President Trump's 6 July tariff decree, a 10% levy on any country aligning with what he terms the anti-American policies of BRICS is the calculated fulfilment of a warning he issued in December 2024, when he pledged tariffs of up to 100% on both BRICS members and partners. This is an attempt to institutionalise financial coercion as the central mechanism of American foreign economic strategy. The objective is unambiguous. The United States is demanding states suspend efforts towards dedollarisation and disengagement from the U.S.-centred financial order.
Those that refuse will face fiscal penalties, beginning w/ tariffs but extending implicitly to broader forms of exclusion from Western capital markets. It is essentially weaponisation of trade to enforce dollar loyalty through a punitive recycling regime.
For MENA, implications are far-reaching. Iran has accelerated the use of yuan and ruble in bilateral trade, promoted sovereign digital currencies for cross-border settlements, and embraced a strategy of monetary defiance. These shifts have been met with hybrid warfare. The intensification of US military pressure on Iranian infrastructure and the strikes on affiliated groups in Syria and Iraq, come within a broader logic of containment: a strategic act against a state whose monetary and political independence institutionalised with BRICS.
For Washington, Iran's integration into an alternative financial order posed an intolerable risk. The subsequent offer of partial sanctions relief was not a reversal but a tactical move designed to exploit the aftermath of military escalation. The aim was to use sanctions flexibility as leverage to induce Chinese compliance with the US-led order, particularly in its dealings with Iran and in BRICS financial coordination. Moroever, this logic underpins the recent US-backed World Bank disbursements to Lebanon and Syria.
These acts aren't humanitarian, but rather forms of containment. By injecting liquidity and financial oversight into increasingly dollar-sceptical economies, the US seeks to dampen domestic support for monetary realignment and reassert control over the financial circuits of the Levant. These measures are intended to pre-empt dedollarisation at the social level by anchoring communities within donor-administered cash systems and externally managed development infrastructures. Trump’s tariff policy must be read in continuity with these interventions. It's part of a strategy to reassert US centrality in global capital circulation by coercing alignment and punishing deviation. BRICS has afforded MENA states the capacity to reimagine sovereignty beyond the dollar and Washington has responded with escalation.