BRICS Bloc Urges Calm on Middle East, Trade.

Xi Jinping and Narendra Modi have stood on the same stage in Delhi for only the second time since their armies clashed on the Tibetan border in 2020. Vladimir Putin was there too this weekend, along with leaders from Saudi Arabia, the UAE, Iran and Egypt, with a number of others looking on. It's the 18th BRICS summit,  and the bloc's 20th anniversary. For New Zealand it’s becoming kind of important.

BRICS members now account for roughly 40 percent of global GDP and half the world's population, with help from Iran, Egypt, Ethiopia, Saudi Arabia, the UAE and, most recently, Indonesia.

This year's summit is being held against a backdrop of wars in the Middle East and Ukraine, and competing views on the US/Israel conflict with Iran. The bloc unanimously adopted a joint declaration calling for calm in the Middle East and stressing the need to keep global trade, supply chains and energy flowing smoothly,

Some strong rhetoric, no binding commitments, but perhaps the real story is that they got 11 members with genuinely competing interests to agree on the Middle East language at all

BRICS is where an increasing share of New Zealand's trading partners now sit. China remains our largest single export market by a wide margin. India is very close to becoming a formal free-trade partner, while Indonesia, Egypt and the UAE are all markets New Zealand exporters have been chasing independently of anything happening in Delhi this weekend.

That overlap is exactly why the "should New Zealand join BRICS" question has resurfaced, including on RNZ’s The Detail podcast, where Auckland University's Chris Ogden argued the bloc isn't just a trade option but a chance to get a seat at the table as new financial architecture and alternatives to US dollar-denominated systems are discussed.  

All smiles in Delhi this weekend as BRICS leaders gather / Image supplied

MFAT's own market reporting suggests officials are watching the bloc's rise more as an illustration of a fragmenting trading system rather than a new club to join. New Zealand's actual diplomatic energy this year has gone into narrower, more traditional issues like the supply-security pact with Singapore, the expansion of the Digital Economy Agreement signed in 2020, and the conclusion of the India FTA.

Still, Modi's framing of BRICS this week as representing a shift in "who writes the rules" of global trade and finance is a reminder of the position small, trade-dependent economies like New Zealand find themselves in.

If BRICS members increasingly settle trade in local currencies, build out their own payment systems, or set their own product standards, that changes the environment New Zealand exporters sell into, whether or not Wellington has an opportunity to join the debate.

The India FTA appears to be New Zealand's most concrete answer to that shift so far - a fairly safe bet that bilateral depth with an individual BRICS member matters more than actually joining the bloc itself.

The test now is whether Xi and Modi's Delhi meeting produces anything tangible. Six years on from the border clash that really dented the relationship, both sides are talking about an "early harvest" on the frontier dispute while keeping tens of thousands of troops in place along it.

BRICS may never be a bloc New Zealand joins. But as its members become a bigger part of our export picture, we are surely set to become more intimately involved.

Asia Media Centre