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A newsletter from The Wire | Founded by Tanweer Alam, Sidharth Bhatia, Pratik Kanjilal, Seema Chishti, Sushant Singh, MK Venu, and Siddharth Varadarajan | Contributing writer: Kalrav Joshi, with additional inputs by Anirudh SK

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Over to Sidharth Bhatia for today’s Cable

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Snapshot of the day

July 7, 2025

Sidharth Bhatia

United States President Donald Trump is threatening an additional 10% tariff on goods from any country supporting what he called BRICS‘ “anti-American policies.” “There will be no exceptions to this policy,” Trump wrote. This came after the BRICS grouping that includes India issued a joint statement from Rio de Janeiro voicing “serious concerns about the rise of unilateral tariff and non-tariff measures” and calling them arbitrary and illegal, but stopping short of directly naming Washington. With growing geopolitical tensions, including recent friction between India and the US over Operation Sindoor, questions remain whether BRICS’ strong anti-tariff stance could further complicate the ongoing trade talks between New Delhi and Washington. [For more on the BRICS statement, see Item 1]

Major United States trading partners scrambled over the weekend to finalise trade deals or lobby for extra time as Trump said he’s notifying about a dozen countries on Monday of the new tariff level on their shipments to the US.