At their latest summit in Brazil, the BRICS nations once again portrayed themselves as an emerging geopolitical heavyweight. Yet the internal contradictions within this expanding group remain plain to see.

The world has changed and the western-led postwar order is over, or so the Brics bloc of developing nations insists. Equally clear at the group’s annual summit in Rio de Janeiro this week was that the Brics have changed too — and not for the better. The new model is bigger, less coherent and far less likely to achieve any of its putative goals.

Trump’s remarks seem more like a warning to Brics and unlikely to affect India’s efforts to finalise a trade pact with the US, analysts say.

President Lula Da Silva's stark warning at the BRICS Summit exposes the alarming collapse of multilateralism and the dangerous rise of unilateralism, signalling a seismic shift in global power dynamic

BRICS, formed in 2009, is the only major international group of which the US is not a part. Its other members are South Africa, Iran, Egypt, Ethiopia, and the United Arab Emirates.

The Federal Government has dismissed the possibility of accepting 300 Venezuelan deportees from the United States, amid rising diplomatic tensions

BRICS members are India, Brazil, Russia, China, South Africa, Saudi Arabia, Egypt, United Arab Emirates, Ethiopia, Indonesia, and Iran.

The summit was attended by representatives from the bloc’s 11 member states: Brazil, Russia, India, China, South Africa, Egypt, Ethiopia, Indonesia, Iran, and the United Arab Emirates. This expansion of BRICS membership reflects the group’s stated aim to increase representation from the Global South.