Students learn about BRICS activities at Moscow festival
TEHRAN, Dec. 02 (MNA) – Over 500 schoolchildren from various regions of Russia gathered in Moscow at the BRICS Festival to learn about the culture, languages and traditions of the BRICS countries etc.
Over 500 schoolchildren from various regions of Russia gathered in Moscow at the BRICS Festival. The participants learnt about the culture, languages and traditions of the BRICS countries, as well as about the activities of group's countries. The event was combined with an open day at the faculty of pre-university education of the Moscow State Institute of International Relations (MGIMO University).
Igor Putintsev, Vice-Rector for language and pre-university education, welcomed the students. He emphasized that the training of international specialists who speak the languages of the BRICS countries plays a key role in strengthening international ties.
Anna Lisina, Editor-in-Chief of the TV BRICS news portal, was a special guest of the festival. She spoke about the peculiarities of the multilingual portal's editorial work, presented the BRICS Bloggers Team and BRICS View international media network's projects to the students, and introduced the festival guests to the principles of TV BRICS information exchange with foreign partners. She also conducted a quiz for pupils on the topic "Creating scripts for video clips with the help of artificial intelligence".
Nikita Molchakov, Dean of the International Law Faculty of MGIMO University, also spoke at the event and shared the experience of the IX BRICS Legal Forum.
"Each BRICS initiative has its own driver country. [...] Even the BRICS Legal Forum, despite the fact that there are ten countries, has three drivers that have been supporting this movement for nine years: these are Russia, India and Brazil. These are the three drivers of the legal movement within BRICS," he explained.
Head of the student community Aleksander Khanarov spoke about the work of the first international student platform for generating ideas of BRICS countries – BRICS Project Lab, while Maria Starikova, Senior Lecturer of the Department of Indo-Iranian and African Languages, outlined the peculiarities of teaching Hindi, which is spoken by almost 500 million people.
"The government is actively promoting Hindi and other local languages. There are a total of 22 official languages in India, and Hindi is attracting huge interest not only in our country but all over the world," she said.
The creative part of the programme included performances by MGIMO University students. They performed a song in Chinese, Arabic dance "Dabke" and presented a linguo-country study in Portuguese. A quiz on the history and activities of BRICS was also organised for the festival participants. The winners received memorable gifts.
In addition, the open day of the faculty of pre-university education presented study programmes.
The festival was organised by the Centre for Work with Schools of MGIMO and the TV BRICS International Media Network. The event is implemented within the framework of the project "EastTalk MGIMO: Introduction to Oriental Studies for Schoolchildren" with the support of the state programme "Priority 2030", aimed at creating more than 100 progressive modern universities in Russia by 2030.
Source: TV BRICS
Trump puts pressure on BRICS, in an attempt to have countries around the world stay anchored to the US dollar-based financial system.
Donald Trump’s fresh pressure on countries around the world to stay anchored to a US-dollar-based financial system is a tactic that risks backfiring, market watchers say.
The dollar looks likely to dominate the world economy for the foreseeable future and emerging nations’ idea of setting up their own single currency is “hot air,” said Mark Sobel, a retired 40-year veteran of currency policy who worked at the US Treasury.
Trump’s latest intervention does though risk undermining the greenback and increasing the likelihood of such pacts by encouraging countries to explore ways to avoid the US currency. Russia responded on Monday with the Kremlin saying the dollar’s appeal is already eroding and that forcing countries to use it would “further strengthen the trend” away from it.
“It isn’t a good look,” Brad Setser, senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations and a former US Treasury official during Barack Obama’s presidency, wrote on. It “indirectly elevates the stature of a non-threat and suggests a lack of confidence in the dollar,” he said.
Trump, the elected autocrat
Trump on the weekend warned the so-called BRICS countries he would require a commitment that they wouldn’t create a new currency as an alternative to using the greenback, and repeated threats to levy a 100 percent tariff on them if they did.
While South Africa said on Monday there are no plans to create such a rival, Saturday’s post to his Truth Social network echoes comments Trump made in his election campaign and highlights how governments and traders will need to stay alert at all hours to his use of social media in the next four years.
Any attempt to dethrone the greenback is easier said than done.
It accounted for about 88 percent of all trades in the US$7.5 trillion-a-day foreign exchange market, based on the latest triennial survey from the Bank for International Settlements published in 2022.
The size and strength of the US economy is also unparalleled, Treasuries are still one of the safest ways to store money, and the greenback is still the ultimate beneficiary of haven flows.
“The dollar remains dominant for several reasons: the USD is the most liquid currency in the world, trades freely, it is also the leading currency of the world,” said Rodrigo Catril, a strategist at National Australia Bank Ltd. in Sydney.
But he added that if “Trump increases the pressure on BRICS, it may well accelerate a move away from the dollar.”
BRICS members control more than 40 percent of central bank reserves globally and have discussed ways to reduce reliance on the greenback — including the idea of a single currency for use between them.
In its statement, South Africa’s government said “the discussions within BRICS focus on trading among member countries using their own national currencies.”
“With regards to this specific threat, it doesn’t appear realistic and the probability is low but serves as a good reminder that President-elect Trump wants to keep the US dollar as a reserve currency and is unlikely to proactively devalue the dollar,” said Cindy Lau, head of fixed income at Avanda Investment Management Pte. in Singapore.
“This also reaffirms our thinking that tariffs will be continually used as a threat in his term, to serve his objectives, and as a powerful bargaining tool,” she said.
While there’s no immediate threat to the dollar’s supremacy, the long-term outlook is less certain.
Brazil and China had previously struck deals to settle trade in their local currencies, while India and Malaysia had inked an accord to increase the usage of the rupee in cross-border business. Thailand and China’s central banks in May signed a memorandum of understanding to promote bilateral transactions in local currencies, and Trump’s latest comments may actually increase the likelihood of further such agreements.
“From today, anyone outside the US who uses the dollar for transactions will sense this as a yoke that the US is imposing on them,” said Ulrich Leuchtmann, head of foreign exchange research at Commerzbank AG in Frankfurt. “In the long term, this cannot be a stable state of affairs. Especially since this yoke is likely to be felt all the more oppressively the more selfishly US policy acts in other areas.”
by By Ruth Carson and Matthew Burgess
Sat 30 November 2024
His threat was directed at countries in the so-called BRIC alliance, which consists of Brazil, Russia, India, China, South Africa, Egypt, Ethiopia, Iran and the United Arab Emirates.
Turkey, Azerbaijan and Malaysia have applied to become members and several other countries have expressed interest in joining.
While the U.S. dollar is by far the most-used currency in global business and has survived past challenges to its preeminence, members of the alliance and other developing nations say they are fed up with America’s dominance of the global financial system.
The dollar represents roughly 58% of the world’s foreign exchange reserves, according to the IMF and major commodities like oil are still primarily bought and sold using dollars. The dollar's dominance is threatened, however, with BRICS' growing share of GDP and the alliance's intent to trade in non-dollar currencies — a process known as de-dollarization.
Trump, in a Truth Social post, said: “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."
At a summit of BRIC nations in October, Russian President Vladimir Putin accused the U.S. of “weaponizing” the dollar and described it as a “big mistake.”
“It’s not us who refuse to use the dollar,” Putin said at the time. “But if they don’t let us work, what can we do? We are forced to search for alternatives.”
Russia has specifically pushed for the creation of a new payment system that would offer an alternative to the global bank messaging network, SWIFT, and allow Moscow to dodge Western sanctions and trade with partners.
Trump said there is "no chance" BRIC will replace the U.S. dollar in global trade and any country that tries to make that happen "should wave goodbye to America.”
Research shows that the U.S. dollar's role as the primary global reserve currency is not threatened in the near future.
An Atlantic Council model that assesses the dollar’s place as the primary global reserve currency states the dollar is “secure in the near and medium term” and continues to dominate other currencies.
Trump's latest tariff threat comes after he threatened to slap 25% tariffs on everything imported from Mexico and Canada, and an additional 10% tax on goods from China, as a way to force the countries to do more to halt the flow of illegal immigration and drugs into the U.S.
He has since held a call with Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum, who said Thursday she is confident that a tariff war with the United States can be averted. Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau returned home Saturday after meeting Trump, without assurances the president-elect will back away from threatened tariffs on Canada.
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