As the Western-led governance system experiences an incessant erosion of credibility over its own predatory and protectionist policies, leading to more international turbulence and slower global growth — Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi, at the BRICS summit in Rio de Janeiro, offered a framework of cooperation to protect interests of the Global South and develop a joint response to the new, cascading challenges, helping contending with America's actions to erect trade barriers and grow at the expense of development in developing nations.

President Donald Trump of the US has imposed indiscriminate tariffs on almost the entire world, not seen in more than a century. These "fake" taxes reveal that the US can no longer claim to be an anchor of the international economic system or guarantor of free trade and fears competition, which could drive up innovation in the country and have benefited America and Americans for decades.

This "rent-seeking" approach could weigh on the global economy and the US economy. According to the IMF, a burst of tariffs introduced by Trump on April 2 could lower US growth to 1.8% in 2025, a 0.9% decline from the Fund's January forecast. This could prompt the IMF to call for an urgent trade policy settlement among major players.

At this watershed moment when tariff-induced uncertainty is spiking off the charts, strengthening multilateralism is one of the key means to promote development across regions since it represents a majority of the nations and........

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