India will attend virtual Brics Summit next week, says Jaishankar will represent

The decision to nominate the external affairs minister to participate in the meeting was part of a balancing act, people familiar with the matter said

Published on: Sep 5, 2025, 21:27:59 IST

By Rezaul H Laskar

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NEW DELHI: External affairs minister S Jaishankar will represent India at a virtual Brics Summit convened by Brazil’s President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva next week to discuss US President Donald Trump’s trade policy and to rally the leaders of emerging economies.

India's foreign minister Subrahmanyam Jaishankar (REUTERS FILE)

Brazil is the current chair of the Brics grouping that also includes China, Russia and Iran.

Lula telephoned Prime Minister Narendra Modi last month to discuss the fallout of Trump imposing 50% tariffs on both countries. At the time, the two leaders pledged to deepen bilateral cooperation in areas such as trade and energy.

“The Brazilian chair of Brics has called for a virtual meeting on September 8,” external affairs ministry spokesperson Randhir Jaiswal told a weekly media briefing.

“From our side, it will be the external affairs minister who will be participating in [the meeting]. This Brics Summit is at the leaders’ level,” he said, without giving further details.

Reports from Brazil suggested that Lula intends to discuss the tariffs imposed by Trump and forge closer cooperation with the leaders of the other emerging economies in Brics in support of multilateralism. However, Brazilian officials have also said that the Brics meeting should not be perceived as an anti-US summit.

Trump has imposed some of his highest tariffs yet on India and Brazil. He has linked Brazil’s penalties to demands for ending the prosecution of former president Jair Bolsonaro, who has been accused of an attempted coup, and penalised India for Russian oil purchases.

The Brics Summit follows the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO) Summit at Tianjin in China that witnessed several meetings between Chinese President Xi Jinping, Russian President Vladimir Putin and Prime Minister Narendra Modi.

People familiar with the matter said the decision to nominate the external affairs minister to participate in the meeting was part of a balancing act at a time when the US harbours suspicions about some members of Brics being behind a de-dollarisation effort and the promotion of trade settlement in national currencies. The Indian side has repeatedly said it is not part of any efforts at Brics to replace the US dollar with other currencies.

During their phone call last month, Modi and Lula agreed on deepening the bilateral strategic partnership in areas such as trade, energy, technology, defence and health. Lula also emphasised their commitment to “defending multilateralism”.

In this context, Lula announced he would visit India early next year. Brazilian vice president Geraldo Alckmin will also travel to India in October to participate in a meeting of a trade monitoring mechanism, leading a delegation of ministers and business leaders to discuss cooperation in trade energy and critical minerals.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Rezaul H Laskar
Rezaul Hasan Laskar is Foreign Editor with the Hindustan Times, which he joined in 2015. He began as a journalist in his hometown of Shillong in northeast India and has worked in newspapers and wire services over the years. He moved to New Delhi in 1997 and initially focused on defence, national security, Jammu and Kashmir and the northeast, while also working of foreign policy and international relations. He has been part of the media delegation accompanying PMs on foreign visits and has reported from destinations ranging from Tibet to Ukraine. Between 2007 and 2013, he was the Press Trust of India correspondent in Pakistan, one of only two Indian journalists allowed to report from the country. He extensively covered Pakistan’s domestic politics and the life of the common people, as well as the fallout of the 2008 Mumbai attacks on India-Pakistan relations and the subsequent trial in Pakistan of the suspects involved in the attack. As part of his reportage in Pakistan, he travelled the breadth of the country, from the Swat Valley to Balochistan. Reza’s first gig in journalism was writing a weekly music column, and music – especially classic rock – remains a keen interest. He is also a movie buff and a keen photographer.Read More

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