Among President Donald Trump’s many goals for his second term in office has been the destruction of the intergovernmental organization known as BIRCS, a coalition of Russia, China and eight other nations to challenge the western-dominated world order, though his efforts to do so, wrote The Washington Post’s Max Boot Wednesday, are only “backfiring.”

“Trump has emerged as the strongest salesman for the value of this international organization, created in 2009 at Russian President Vladimir Putin’s instigation to challenge the post-1945, American-led world order,” Boot wrote in an op-ed published Wednesday in The Washington Post. “Trump seems intent on alienating America’s potential partners in the group.”

Despite proclaiming BRICS to have been “dead” less than a month into his second term, Trump’s aggressive tariff policy, which leaked documents have revealed contain a list of secret geopolitical objectives, has often been used by the president in an attempt to weaken BRICS. He threatened any nation aligning itself with BRICS to be issued an additional 10% tariff rate in July, and back in November of 2024, threatened BRIC nations with a 100% tariff rate should they attempt to create a new currency to challenge the U.S. dollar.

Those threats, however, have only backfired, Boot argued, alienating potential allies to the United States and pushing them further into relying on BRICS nations.

“It's strategic malpractice to drive America’s potential partners in that group – Brazil, South Africa and India – into the arms of China and Russia,” Boot wrote. “Julius Caesar expanded Roman power with a policy of ‘divide and conquer.’ Trump is diminishing U.S. power by perversely uniting America’s friends with our enemies.”

Examples Boot cites include Trump’s 50% tariff rate on Brazil, stemming largely over the prosecution of its former president Jair Bolsonaro for an attempted coup that some have compared to the Jan. 6 Capitol riot. The steep tariff has pushed Brazil further into its alliances with China and Russia.

The same was true for India, also slapped with a 50% tariff rate, which continues to buy Russian oil and has

paused previously planned purchases

of American-made weapons.