July 8, 2025
RIO DE JANEIRO – President Prabowo Subianto said on Monday that BRICS should be the conduit for further cooperation among countries in the Global South, calling for a further integration of trade ties and supply chains.
Prabowo made the appeal in his speech at the second session of the BRICS summit in the coastal Brazilian city of Rio de Janeiro to discuss finance, artificial intelligence and multilateralism.
“The President proposes a South-South Economic Compact with the objective of making BRICS countries the driver in giving greater access to countries in Global South to trade and also integrating their economies into a supply chain,” Deputy Foreign Minister Armanatha Nasir was quoted by Antara as saying.
Earlier on Sunday, BRICS leaders at a summit on Sunday took aim at United States President Donald Trump’s “indiscriminate” import tariffs and recent Israeli-US strikes on Iran.
The 11 emerging nations, including Brazil, Russia, India, China, South Africa and Indonesia, account for about half the world’s population and 40 percent of global economic output.
The summit also called for regulation governing artificial intelligence and said the technology could not be the preserve of only rich nations.
The commercial AI sector is currently dominated by US tech giants, although China and other nations have rapidly developing capacity.
In opening remarks to the BRICS summit in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil’s President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva drew a parallel with the Cold War’s Non-Aligned Movement, a group of developing nations that resisted joining either side of a polarized global order.
“BRICS is the heir to the Non-Aligned Movement,” Lula told leaders. “With multilateralism under attack, our autonomy is in check once again.”