De-Dollarisation 2025: BRICS Buying Bloc, Not Dollar Collapse
Oct 28, 2025
Introduction: Smoke, Mirrors and Structural Exit
Every few decades, markets tag a seductive sound-bite. In 2024-25 the phrase is “de-dollarisation.” You hear it like blood in the water: the BRICS (Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa) and allies are supposedly lining up to take down the dollar. Get ready for chaos, they say. Buy yuan. Buy rubles. Buy gold.
Wrong read. It’s not a frontal assault. It’s an insurance strategy—shielding, not smashing.
The U.S. dollar remains dominant: central bank reserves are still about 57% dollar-denominated by 2024. (Policy Centre) Meanwhile, the cadets are quietly building side corridors: the five-plus power bloc now accounts for 42.5 % of global GDP (PPP) in 2024, 28.9 % at market rates. (EY) This is not dollar assassination. It’s more like a doubling down on autonomy.
A debt-spewing U.S. fiscal engine catalyses this: chronic deficits, ballooning fiscal outlays, markets betting the next round of issuance won’t be pretty. That echoes John Maynard Keynes’s warning: “no subtler, no surer means of overturning … the currency” than debauchment from within. The dollar isn’t collapsing—its guarantee of budget discipline is fraying.
Look at the BRICS bloc. It’s not romancing revolution. It’s erecting circuits of trade and finance that sidestep U.S. liquidity stress. Option creation, not weapon launch. A VIP lobby, not a mob. They’ll still use dollars where necessary—but inside this zone, the rules change. Like Niccolò Machiavelli might have said: a wise prince keeps the castle intact while moving the furniture.
Trade is the engine. Intra-BRICS trade grew at 9.2 % each year between 2008 and 2024, rising from US$169 billion to nearly US$700 billion. (andamanpartners.com) This isn’t about currency symbolism. It’s about shipping iron, grain, rare earths, oil, and choosing who gets what. The movement is resource-based, distribution-centric. That aligns with George F. Kennan’s view: power lives in who governs access to materials.
The dollar isn’t dead; it’s being slot-reduced. Its share of global reserves dropped by about 12 percentage points since 1999, from 71% to 57.3% in 2024. (Policy Centre) The euro, franc and others nibble at the margins. Still, the dollar dominates trans-border payments and debt markets—so this is evolutionary, not revolutionary.
The real turbo-charger: U.S. policy itself. Sanctions, SWIFT locks, asset freezes. When a reserve currency becomes a blunt instrument, trust erodes. Countries diversify—not out of hate, but fear. The U.S. has become both banker and brawler, and the world got nervous.
Sense the pattern: insurgency isn’t visible because it doesn’t need to be. They’re not burning the old order. They’re building the annex.
Signals of Access and Where the Money Goes
Headline watchers misread swap-lines, yuan-settlement announcements and gold hoarding as the beginning of a final act. Many retail investors panic-sell the dollar or dive into crypto lifeboats. They miss the script entirely.
Watch instead for two vectors: trade-corridor rerouting and access-gate construction. The smart money is buying exporters tied to intra-BRICS flows: ports, pipelines, mineral extraction, and logistic hubs. They aren’t chasing collapse. They’re buying survival infrastructure.
Bricks upon bricks: in 2024‐25, the BRICS+ infrastructure build-out accelerates. The group accounts for 54 % of the global population and 27.3 % of merchandise exports in 2024 (up from 12.9 % in 2000). (EY) The focus is less on launching a rival currency today than forging settlement rails. The payment network work continues. (GIS Reports) This reflects a belt-and-corridor logic, not a war-chest brand.
Retail investors fear “the dollar’s fall.” They ignore that the play here is “the dollar’s exclusion.” The American currency remains immensely liquid—but not everywhere, not always, and often only under new terms. Dollars will function as utility tokens inside the VIP room, not as the universally gifted pass.
So where should capital flow?
- Companies facilitating intra-BRICS commerce: logistics, processing, infrastructure.
- Raw-material producers controlling inputs.
- Multi-currency reserve holders and hard-asset hedgers, not one-currency gamblers.
- Entities aligned with payment-system evolution, not speculative currency flags.
Meanwhile, prepare for blow-back. The very weaponisation of the dollar by the U.S. drives this. Trade sanctions and financial coercion force others to submit to a new architecture—or craft their own. A tariff spike, threatened black-listing, or SWIFT exclusion helps catalyse, not accelerate, the shift.
Make no mistake: this is not a nihilistic crusade against the dollar. It is a meticulous brake on its dominance—a systemic bypass. The real risk for investors isn’t the dollar collapsing tomorrow. The risk is being barred from the rooms where new rules apply, while still holding an old pass.
Drawing from Machiavelli’s realism and Kennan’s containment wisdom: this is power relocated, not detonated. Keynes would nod at the quiet monetarist logic: the currency isn’t collapsing; its invitation list is being narrowed.
Watch the doors. Which nations get invited to the trade table, and which get screened at security? Watch the corridors—who clears oil, who clears data, who clears payment rails when the lights flicker. Every sanction, every tariff, every “sovereign adjustment” is just code for a new lock being installed.
In the coming order, liquidity is geography, and geography is code. Notes can inflate, but access can vanish overnight. Control the choke points and you control the bloodstream of commerce. Ports, clearinghouses, energy grids, satellite lanes, undersea cables—these are the new vaults.
The winner isn’t the one printing currency. It’s the one deciding who gets to spend it.
So stop counting dollars. Start counting doors.
Into the Gate: The Quiet Coup of Access Over Collapse
When the first salvo of “de-dollarisation” stories hit the headlines, investors braced for an apocalypse: the dollar dead, the BRICS triumphant, gold king. Instead, a subtler reversal is underway. The International Monetary Fund reports the U.S. dollar’s share of global foreign-exchange reserves has fallen to 57.7 % in Q1 2025. (wolfstreet.com) Simultaneously, the BRICS+ bloc now accounts for 27.3% of global merchandise exports in 2024. (EY) This is not a flame-out; it is a re-zoning of power.
Consider: intra-BRICS trade expanded from US$169 billion in 2008 to nearly US$700 billion in 2024, at an average annual growth rate of roughly 9.2%. (andamanpartners.com) Meanwhile, the dollar remains foundational—but its privileges are being quietly rescinded. The world isn’t burning the dollar; it’s placing it behind a turnstile. The prize isn’t destruction. It’s access.
History teaches us: Niccolò Machiavelli wrote that a wise ruler should not destroy an empire he cannot manage. George F. Kennan taught that real power flows from control of raw materials, not just men with guns. Here, the system built by Washington—liquidity, incinerated budgets, dollar dominance—is becoming the very reason others seek exit ramps. Washington’s spending spree is an invitation to insulation.
The structure is emerging: a “club model” of trade and finance, with tiers, gatekeeping, and premiums for access. Dollars will keep circulating—but people notice the door is now magnetic-tokened. The loud narrative shouts rebellion. The quiet truth builds corridors.
As investors, the shift you miss isn’t “America gone” but “America optional.” Ownership of USD assets still matters. But entry to the new rooms—ports, pipelines, rare-earth veins, intra-BRICS clearing systems—matters more. Follow those flows. Not because the dollar will collapse tomorrow, but because the access the dollar enabled is being recalibrated.
Conclusion: When the Guard Changes the Door
In the spirit of Machiavelli’s calculated rule and Alexander Suvorov’s furious precision on the battlefield, here is the closing charge:
First, the dollar remains dominant—liquid markets, deep debt, and world trade invoicing still lean toward USD. But second, its immunity has been broken. The IMF indicates its share has slipped from 65% a decade ago to roughly 58% at the end of 2024. (Chatham House) That matters: dominance is one thing; unchecked dominance is another.
Third, BRICS+ now covers 55%+ of humanity and approximately 46% of global GDP. (Geopolitical Economy Report) These aren’t statist toys. They are trade and resource engines. Think fewer public demonstrations; more hidden pipelines of power.
Fourth, the U.S. policy set is fueling this. Tariff threats mounted in 2025, with proposed additional duties on countries aligned with the BRICS. (americanactionforum.org) Weaponised access provokes insulation. One should not provoke a starving beast and then wonder why it builds a shelter.
Where you act:
- Shift from fear of dollar collapse to awareness of exclusion from new corridors. Holding cash isn’t enough. Holding one currency isn’t enough.
- Identify players building the architecture: infrastructure within BRICS corridors, rare-earth mines, logistics hubs linking Asia, Africa, and Latin America.
- Hedge not by chasing dramatic currency moves but by positioning where access shifts: supply-chain re-routing, settlement-system substitution, resource-gatehouses.
- Recognise that the dollar isn’t being dethroned today—but its invitation is being altered. In many rooms, you’ll need a different badge.
The de-dollarisation story isn’t fireworks. It’s the soft click of a lock turning. Don’t watch the dollar die. Watch the door swing. Because whoever controls the door controls the deal. And that is the play most investors ignore.
