With US dominance broken, the BRICS nations can build a fairer world, Miguel Diaz-Canel told RT
RT.com | 31 May, 2023 20:51
Giving up the US dollar will free developing countries from Washington’s “sanctions, blackmail, aggression, and slander,” Cuban President Miguel Diaz-Canel told RT in an exclusive interview due to air on Thursday.
The dollar’s status as the world’s reserve currency enables the US to pursue an “aggressive hegemonistic policy of building walls, imposing punitive sanctions, blackmail, aggression and slander,” Diaz-Canel said. Against this policy – which has seen Cuba embargoed for six decades by the US – Diaz-Canel added that “BRICS provides a brilliant alternative for economic integration, especially for developing economies.”
Since it was first coined in 2001, BRICS has grown from an acronym for five emerging economies – Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa – into an informal alliance that has overtaken the US-led G7 bloc in its share of global GDP, has its own development bank, and counts Saudi Arabia, Iran, and Argentina among 19 prospective members.
Amid calls for a common BRICS currency to settle trade bills, members of the group have begun to conduct more bilateral trade in their own currencies, eschewing the US dollar.