Margaret Myers, director of the Asia program at the Inter-American Dialogue: “Argentina’s potential membership in the BRICS is part of a broader effort to expand the group by incorporating not just Argentina, but also possibly Egypt, Indonesia, Kazakhstan, Nigeria, the UAE, Saudi Arabia, Senegal and Thailand—all of which took part in the online BRICS ministerial event on May 20. Whether any of these or other countries eventually join the BRICS is up to the members and will be debated in the coming months and years, evidently, but the notion of an expanded BRICS has been tossed around for a while now, roughly dating back to speech made by Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi in 2017. It’s hard to imagine that joining the BRICS would significantly increase major economic deal-making between Argentina and BRICS nations. The five BRICS countries already engage with Argentina to varying degrees, in line with their own economic and political interests. China inked a quite a few big deals with Argentina just a few months back…”