Examine the trajectory of BRICS' share in global merchandise trade vis-à-vis the G7. What does this signify for the emerging multipolar economic order?

The centre of gravity of world trade is shifting southward: South–South trade rose from about 11% of world merchandise trade in 2000 to roughly 26% in 2024 [1], while the G7's once-dominant export share has steadily eroded. The convergence is real, but uneven across trade and finance.

Trajectory of the BRICS share

• Enlargement effect: the 2024–25 accession of Egypt, Ethiopia, Iran, the UAE and Indonesia added major hydrocarbon exporters and a large Southeast Asian manufacturing base to the bloc's export pool.
• Structural drivers: China's manufacturing scale, India's fast-growing goods-and-services exports, and Eurasian–Gulf energy flows have lifted the enlarged bloc to close to a quarter of world merchandise exports.
• Institutional deepening: under India's 2026 chairship, the 16th BRICS Trade Ministers' Meeting at Jaipur advanced trade facilitation, MSME participation and digital-trade cooperation [3].
• Settlement reform: interest in trade in national currencies and linked cross-border payment rails builds on work such as the RBI's Inter-Departmental Group report on internationalisation of the rupee [5].

The G7's decline is relative, not absolute

• The G7's falling share reflects faster emerging-market growth, not shrinking trade; it retains dominance in high-value technology, capital goods and services.
• Financial power has not moved with goods: the US dollar still accounts for roughly 57% of global official reserves [4], and correspondent banking remains Western-anchored.
• BRICS itself is asymmetric — China dwarfs other members, intra-bloc trade is hub-and-spoke, and there is no common currency, only payment-system linkage.

What it signifies

• Multipolarity in trade volumes, continuing unipolarity in finance — a partial, transitional multipolarity.
• Greater collective bargaining weight in WTO reform, subsidy and carbon-border disputes.

The trajectory marks a genuine broadening of the global trading base rather than a displacement of the West. India's chairship theme, "Building for Resilience, Innovation, Cooperation and Sustainability" [2], points the way forward: converting trade weight into rules-shaping influence through reformed multilateralism, so that a multipolar order emerges by institutional evolution rather than fragmentation.