BRICS finance chiefs flag tariff risks, push cross-border payments
BRICS finance ministers and central bank governors, meeting in Mumbai on 11 September 2026 under India's 2026 BRICS chairship, issued a joint statement flagging risks from the "unilateral imposition" of tariffs and non-tariff trade measures.
The statement reaffirmed support for a rules-based multilateral trading system with the World Trade Organisation (WTO) "at its core," without naming any specific country.
Ministers endorsed continued work by the BRICS Payment Task Force on interoperability between national payment and messaging systems, alongside greater use of local currencies for trade settlement, while noting there is no "one-size-fits-all" approach.
The statement flagged elevated risks to the global economic outlook from geopolitical tensions, trade fragmentation, policy uncertainty, and rising debt and fiscal vulnerabilities.
WTO's Most-Favoured-Nation Principle and the "Rules-Based Trading System"
The WTO was established on 1 January 1995 under the Marrakesh Agreement (1994), succeeding the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT, 1947). Its foundational principle — Most-Favoured-Nation (MFN) treatment under GATT Article I — requires a member to extend any tariff concession or trade advantage granted to one trading partner to all other WTO members automatically, subject to narrow exceptions (free trade areas, customs unions under GATT Article XXIV; special treatment for developing countries).
Key Details
- WTO has 166 members today, making it the primary forum for negotiating and enforcing global trade rules.
- MFN (Article I, GATT) is complemented by National Treatment (Article III, GATT), which bars discriminating between imported and domestically produced goods once they enter a market.
- The WTO's Dispute Settlement Body's Appellate Body has been non-functional since December 2019 due to blocked appointments of new members, weakening the binding, two-stage adjudication process the "rules-based" system depends on; a subset of members (around 61, roughly a third of the WTO) now use the Multi-Party Interim Appeal Arbitration Arrangement (MPIA) as a workaround.
- Genuine WTO-sanctioned exceptions to MFN tariffs exist for anti-dumping, countervailing, and safeguard duties (see below) — distinct from unilateral tariff hikes imposed outside these frameworks.
BRICS' call to reaffirm "a rules-based multilateral trading system with the WTO at its core" is an implicit invocation of the MFN principle and functioning dispute settlement — both under strain from unilateral tariff actions and the defunct Appellate Body.
Trade Remedy Instruments: Safeguards vs Anti-Dumping vs Countervailing Duties
WTO law permits members to raise tariffs above their bound rates only through specific, rules-based trade remedy instruments, each with a distinct legal trigger and procedure — distinguishing lawful trade defence from the "unilateral" tariff actions BRICS ministers flagged as trade-distorting.
Key Details
- Anti-dumping duties (GATT Article VI; WTO Anti-Dumping Agreement): imposed when a good is exported below its normal/home-market value ("dumped") and causes injury to domestic industry.
- Countervailing duties (WTO Agreement on Subsidies and Countervailing Measures): offset the effect of a foreign government subsidy to an exporter.
- Safeguard measures (GATT Article XIX; WTO Agreement on Safeguards): address a sudden import surge causing serious injury, regardless of whether trade was "unfair"; must be applied on an MFN basis (all countries alike) and are time-bound.
- All three require a formal domestic investigation and evidence of injury/causation before imposition — a due-process requirement that purely unilateral tariff hikes (often justified on national-security or trade-balance grounds under GATT Article XXI) typically bypass.
BRICS' concern over "unilateral imposition of trade and finance-related actions, including the raising of tariffs" contrasts such measures with the due-process-bound, MFN-consistent trade remedies the WTO framework actually permits.
Cross-Border Payment Interoperability: BIS Project Nexus
Beyond BRICS-specific payment cooperation, India also participates in Project Nexus, a Bank for International Settlements (BIS) Innovation Hub initiative to interlink countries' domestic fast/instant payment systems (such as India's UPI) so that cross-border retail payments can settle in near real time without each country building bespoke bilateral links.
Key Details
- Project Nexus connects the fast payment systems of India and four ASEAN economies — Malaysia, the Philippines, Singapore, and Thailand — as founding members, with the Reserve Bank of India as a participating central bank.
- It standardises how a domestic instant payment system (like UPI) connects once to the shared "Nexus" hub instead of building custom links to every other country's system.
- It is a BIS-led, non-BRICS multilateral initiative — a useful comparator for the BRICS Payment Task Force's own work on interoperable payment and messaging channels.
Project Nexus illustrates a parallel, non-BRICS track toward the same policy goal (cheaper, faster, interoperable cross-border payments) that ministers referenced in Mumbai, showing India is pursuing payment-interoperability goals through multiple multilateral channels simultaneously.
- BRICS finance ministers and central bank governors met in Mumbai on 11 September 2026, under India's 2026 BRICS chairship.
- WTO established: 1 January 1995 (Marrakesh Agreement); 166 members currently.
- WTO Appellate Body non-functional since December 2019; MPIA workaround covers roughly a third of WTO membership (about 61 members).
- Trade remedy instruments under WTO law: anti-dumping (Article VI, GATT), countervailing duties (SCM Agreement), safeguards (Article XIX, GATT/Agreement on Safeguards).
- Project Nexus founding participants: India plus Malaysia, the Philippines, Singapore, and Thailand (Indonesia as special observer).