Veteran CEO and investor Jack Truong has identified a lack of cohesion among BRICS nations as a critical barrier to their ambition of challenging U.S. dollar dominance in the global financial system. Despite their collective economic weight and recent expansion, Truong believes the Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa currency initiative faces substantial internal challenges that will prevent it from posing a serious threat to the dollar’s supremacy in the foreseeable future.
The BRICS coalition has significantly expanded its reach since its inception. What began as a summit in Yekaterinburg, Russia, on June 16, 2009, has grown into a formidable economic bloc. South Africa joined in 2010, creating what we now know as BRICS. On Jan. 1, 2024, the original five members welcomed Iran, Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Egypt, and Ethiopia into their ranks, substantially increasing their collective geopolitical and monetary influence. In January 2025, Indonesia joined the countries, creating a 10-member BRICS Plus alliance representing more than 3 billion people. Their combined economic heft and ambition to reduce dependence on the U.S. dollar have sparked discussions about potential shifts in the global financial architecture. Still, Jack Truong remains skeptical about the group’s ability to create a viable alternative to the dollar.
Divergent Economic Interests
According to Truong, one of the most significant barriers to BRICS currency success is the diverse, and often conflicting economic priorities of its member nations.
“Brazil focuses on agricultural and mining sectors, Russia on energy reserves, India on services and a burgeoning technology sector, and South Africa is in the process of diversifying its mining-centric economy,” he says.
“And then there is China, a manufacturing behemoth with global infrastructure investments and domestic market woes,” Truong continues. “This intricate web of competing economic agendas will quickly entangle any currency initiative.”
Dissimilar economic foundations mean that each BRICS member has different priorities when it comes to monetary policy, interest rates, inflation targets, and currency management. What benefits one member economically might harm another. For example, currency devaluation that could benefit China’s export-driven economy might negatively impact India’s service sector or Brazil’s agricultural exports. These fundamental economic differences make it extremely difficult to establish a unified approach to a shared currency.
The Challenge of Cooperation and Consensus
Jack Truong emphasizes that successfully implementing a cohesive currency tactic requires “consensus, cooperation, and mutual objectives,” qualities that are in short supply within the BRICS coalition due to their “unique economic landscapes, divergent political and cultural ideologies, and disparate national objectives.”
The political reality of bringing together nations with such different systems of government — ranging from democratic India to authoritarian Russia and China — creates substantial barriers to the deep cooperation needed for a shared currency. Truong suggests that getting leaders like “Putin and Xi and Modi all sitting in the same room and agreeing on one direction” would be nearly impossible because “those three all want their own special interests, not to mention their outsized egos.”
Additionally, Truong notes that China’s disproportionate economic influence within the group would likely create power imbalances that would further complicate consensus-building.
Limited Trust in BRICS Institutions
Truong contrasts the institutional strength of the U.S. with the challenges facing BRICS nations.
“America’s diverse economy, political stability, and military prowess endow the U.S. dollar with robust integrity and strength,” he says. “U.S. institutions are known for transparency, predictability, and a strong adherence to the rule of law, cultivating a high level of global confidence in the [dollar]. Consistent U.S. policies and global engagement continue to foster strong partnerships.”
In contrast, Truong says BRICS countries face significant internal and external challenges that impede universal acceptance and confidence in their currencies. He identifies “economic volatility, authoritarian governance issues, and geopolitical uncertainties” as the primary factors holding back BRICS ambitions. “Successfully creating a BRICS alternative to the U.S. dollar requires navigating these internal disparities, global trust deficits, and the unpredictability of opaque regimes — [which will be] no easy feat,” he continues.
These institutional weaknesses are particularly problematic for a project like a shared currency, which requires high levels of trust from both member nations and the global market. Market participants need confidence in the stability, transparency, and reliability of the institutions backing a currency — qualities that are often lacking in several BRICS nations.
Gold Reserves and Financial Infrastructure Gap
Jack Truong also highlights practical barriers to a BRICS currency challenge, including the significant gap in gold reserves between the United States and the BRICS nations. While the central banks of China, India, and Russia have been aggressively increasing their gold reserves recently, “the U.S. central bank’s gold reserve is still more than 48% of the BRICS countries’ gold reserves combined,” according to data from Axios cited by Truong.
This gold reserve disparity underscores a broader infrastructure gap between the dollar-based financial system and any potential BRICS alternative. The U.S. dollar benefits from decades of established infrastructure, including clearing houses, settlement systems, and financial market instruments denominated in dollars. Creating comparable infrastructure for a new currency would require enormous investment and coordination, further complicated by the lack of cohesion among BRICS members.
Despite China’s growing economic prominence, its currency, the yuan (renminbi), accounts for less than 5% of global payments, compared to the U.S. dollar’s 47%. A 2023 research paper from the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace noted: “The amount of renminbi available outside of China remains quite limited relative to the dollar, and the currency’s cross-border usage in payments is greatly eclipsed by the dollar’s role (and it could be negatively affected by a weakening Chinese economy).”
The incompatibility of BRICS nations’ economic interests, political systems, and objectives creates a barrier to the cohesion necessary for currency cooperation. As Truong observes, the diverse economic foundations — from Brazil’s agricultural focus to Russia’s energy dependence, India’s service sector emphasis, and China’s manufacturing dominance — create an “intricate web of competing economic agendas” that would inevitably entangle any unified currency initiative.”