BRICS set up to ‘degenerate’ US dollar, its members will have to pay 10% tariff: Trump

US President Donald Trump alleged on Tuesday that the BRICS was set up to “hurt” the US and “degenerate” the dollar as he warned that the member countries of the bloc would have to pay a 10 per cent tarifff.

“They have to pay 10 per cent if they are in BRICS,” he said while talking to reporters at the sixth Cabinet meeting at the White House.

“And that's okay if they want to play that game, but I can play that game too. So anybody that's in BRICS is getting a 10% charge”.

The President further claimed that the BRICS largely broke up but there are a couple who hang around.

“BRICS is not, in my opinion, a serious threat. But what they're trying to do is destroy the dollar so that another country can take over and be the standard, and we're not going to lose the standard at any time,” Trump said. 

"If you have a smart president, you will never lose the standard."

Trump asserted that he would never allow the US losing the world standard dollar. 

“If we lost the world standard dollar, that would be like losing a war, a major world war; we would not be the same country any longer. We're not going to let that happen...dollar is king, we're going to keep it that way,” he said, adding that those ho want to challenge the dollar would have to pay a big price.

Trump’s remarks came days after the leaders of the BRICS—Brazil, Russia, India, China, South Africa, Saudi Arabia, Egypt, United Arab Emirates, Ethiopia, Indonesia, and Iran—met in Brazil for the 17th BRICS Summit on July 6-7.