CHINA CALLS U.S A BULLY AS TRUMP'S NEW TARRIFS FACE BACKLASH FROM THE BRICS GROUP OF NATIONS

The BRICS group of nations (Brazil, Russia, India, China, South Africa) are leading a global backlash against the latest round of tariffs brought in by US President Donald Trump, with a senior Chinese envoy calling the US a “bully” and other leaders making it clear they don’t intend to back down in the growing trade war.
“Give the bully an inch, he will take a mile,” China’s ambassador to India, Xu Feihong, said in a social media post on Thursday.
Xu’s post quoted Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi, who said – without naming the US – that “using tariffs as a weapon to suppress other countries violates the UN Charter, undermines WTO rules, and is both unpopular and unsustainable.”
Xu’s words are another sign that India-China relations are warming in the face of economic pressure from the United States. Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi is set to make his first visit to China in seven years at the end of August, with a trip to a meeting of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) in Tianjin.
In a speech on Wednesday night, Modi said he is ready to “pay a very heavy price” to protect India’s trade policies, specifically policies meant to protect Indian farmers from increased imports from the US.
India has been resisting US pressure to allow genetically modified (GM) crops to be imported so that US farmers can gain a larger foothold in the market.
But for the US, the larger sticking point is Indian imports of Russian oil. President Trump announced this week that he will hike tariffs on Indian goods from the current 25% to 50% by August 27 if India doesn’t stop buying oil from Russia, which has been under sanctions by Western countries since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in 2022.