BRICS trade: The BRICS Business Forum meets in New Delhi on September 11, a day before leaders gather for the 18th BRICS Summit. Trade and supply chains are high on the agenda. Yet the 11-member grouping faces a basic problem. Its members want more commerce among themselves, but they have very different ideas about how far their own markets should be opened.
That matters because greater trade does not by itself produce economic integration. Firms need predictable access to markets, stable rules and reasonable confidence that regulations will not change abruptly. BRICS has made considerable progress in the volume of trade among its members. It has made much less progress in building the rules that would allow businesses to treat those markets as an integrated economic space.
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BRICS trade runs ahead of its rules
The differences start with the composition of BRICS itself. China is the dominant manufacturing exporter. Russia and several newer members are important energy producers. Brazil is a major agricultural exporter. India is expanding manufacturing while retaining substantial protection for agriculture and several domestic industries. Indonesia combines manufacturing ambitions with commodity exports. The Gulf economies bring energy and capital to the table.
These economies have many reasons to trade. They have fewer reasons to expose politically sensitive sectors to unrestricted competition.
India illustrates the problem. Its eighth WTO Trade Policy Review, held in July, examined a trade regime in which tariffs, regulatory requirements and state support continue to play an important role. The WTO records a simple average most-favoured-nation tariff of 15.8% for India in 2025.
Some of the friction is already visible among BRICS members. China has challenged Indian measures affecting solar products, information-technology goods, batteries and electric vehicles at the WTO. India rejects China’s allegations and maintains that the measures comply with WTO rules. Indonesia has raised concerns in WTO committees about Indian quality-control and import requirements covering products including steel, plywood, furniture and tyres.
These disputes need not derail BRICS cooperation. They do show how difficult deeper integration would be.
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The China problem is also an integration problem
India’s economic relationship with China captures the contradiction. Indian factories depend heavily on Chinese capital goods and intermediate inputs even as New Delhi seeks to reduce excessive dependence on Chinese supply chains.
The government itself has acknowledged the structure of this dependence. It told Parliament that India’s widening trade deficit with China is driven largely by imports of raw materials, intermediate goods and capital goods, including electronic parts, machinery, auto components and pharmaceutical ingredients.
That makes China indispensable to parts of Indian manufacturing. It also makes unrestricted liberalisation politically difficult.
The problem goes beyond India. China’s manufacturing scale creates an asymmetry within BRICS that any serious market-opening programme would have to confront. Lower barriers could reduce input costs and increase competition. They could also expose domestic producers in other member economies to a much larger Chinese industrial base.
BRICS therefore has to deal with the same political economy that complicates trade negotiations elsewhere. Governments favour export opportunities. They are more guarded when liberalisation threatens farmers, factories or employment at home.
A large trading relationship, but little integration
Intra-BRICS merchandise trade reached $1.17 trillion in 2024, up from $84 billion in 2003, according to India’s commerce ministry. That thirteen-fold increase is substantial.
But the growth of trade should not be confused with the creation of an integrated market.
Much of the commerce reflects economic complementarity. Russia exports energy. Brazil sells agricultural commodities. Indonesia supplies commodities and manufactured products. China exports machinery and industrial inputs. India sells pharmaceuticals, engineering goods and refined petroleum products.
Deeper integration would require more than larger bilateral flows. Companies would have to be able to build supply chains across member countries with greater confidence about tariffs, standards, customs procedures and investment rules.
BRICS does not provide that framework. It remains an informal coordination mechanism. It is neither a customs union nor a free-trade area, and its members have not accepted binding commitments to provide one another preferential market access.
That distinguishes it from arrangements built around enforceable trade concessions. BRICS can encourage regulatory cooperation and trade facilitation. It cannot require India to cut a tariff, China to alter an industrial policy or another member to remove a domestic restriction simply because its partners object.
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Payments are easier than opening markets
BRICS has consequently made more visible progress in areas that require less surrender of domestic policy space.
Local-currency financing and cross-border payments are examples. The grouping has been examining greater interoperability among national payment systems, while the New Development Bank has expanded local-currency financing. Its current strategy sets a target of 30% of financing in local currencies.
These initiatives have economic value. They can lower transaction costs, reduce foreign-exchange risks and widen financing options. They do not resolve the market-access problem.
It is easier for governments to discuss a cheaper payment mechanism than to expose protected producers to foreign competition. A rupee-renminbi transaction does not require India to change an import duty. Payment interoperability does not settle disputes over subsidies, standards or industrial policy.
This distinction is important because BRICS is sometimes judged by ambitions it has never acquired the institutional machinery to fulfil.
The grouping can become a stronger platform for South-South economic cooperation. Its New Development Bank can finance infrastructure and sustainable development. Members can improve customs cooperation, payments, standards dialogue and selected supply chains. These are practical gains.
A common market is another matter. It would require reciprocal concessions on issues that governments consider central to domestic economic policy.
That is where the New Delhi meetings face their most useful test. Intra-BRICS trade has already grown without a free-trade architecture. The question is whether members are prepared to make the smaller, politically difficult bargains that could deepen it. Unless they are, BRICS will remain an influential economic forum whose members trade extensively with one another, rather than an integrated trading bloc.