Sh*tting BRICS: Trump, Dollar Primacy, and Multipolarity

If you think Trump’s foreign policy is going to be neither imperialist nor primacist, then you’re ignoring the evidence staring you in the face.

Trump just announced a big, paranoid threat against the BRICS+ nations on his new favorite social media platform:

We require a commitment from these Countries that they will neither create a new BRICS Currency, nor back any other Currency to replace the mighty U.S. Dollar or, they will face 100% Tariffs, and should expect to say goodbye to selling into the wonderful U.S. Economy.

This actually reveals a lot about the direction of Trump’s foreign policy.

Dollar primacy—aka dollar hegemony, aka dollar supremacy, aka dollar dominance, aka dollar imperialism—is a bad deal for the working class, but it matters to Trump because it’s a big deal to Wall Street financiers and to the national security state.

More importantly though, dollar supremacy is a key site of contradiction in the Trump/MAGA/NatCon project, and the first step to making US foreign policy less evil is working out those contradictions.

Let me explain.