Peter Lewis: Asia Business Correspondent on India’s reaction to US President Trump's ‘dead economy’ comment

US President Donald Trump has called India a country with a ‘dead economy.’ 

Despite India being one of the largest and fastest growing economies in the world, Trump lumped India in with Russia when criticising their economies. 

Asia business correspondent Peter Lewis says that Donald Trump’s comments could affect the two countries’ trade.  

He told Heather duPlessis-Allan that ‘It’s rather upended the relationship’  

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Heather Do for Clan Peter Lewis, Asia Business correspondent with US.
Hey Peter, Hello, Heather, Right, what's India head to say?

Speaker 2 (00:07):
Then, well, they're not happy as you can imagine. Donald
Trump described them as being a dead economy. He BUCkies
in them along with Russia. He said, both dead economies
can go down together as far as he's concerned. It's
rather upended the relationship. And first of all, because it's
not at least not true. I mean, if you look

(00:28):
at India's economic growth rates, it's one of the fastest
in the world. It's back to twenty twenty three. A
couple of years ago, it was growing over ninety percent
right now. Last year it grew about six and a
half percent, probably going to do the same again this year.
So it is one of the most sort of vitalized

(00:48):
economies in the world. And as the Central Bank governor
pointed out, India contributes about eighteen percent of global growth
compared to just eleven percent for the So it's doing
very very well at the moment. And in fact that
this time. We've seen these growth spurts in India before

(01:09):
and they sometimes haven't really lasted, but this one is
definitely lasting because it is being accompanied by some quite
major reforms that are going on in the country to
try and open up various sectors for more foreign competition
by trying to do things that are helping ease the
burden on Indian families, make it easier for Indian children

(01:33):
to get educated and to go into college. So there's
been some very major reforms, but none of that is
enough for Donald Trump, apparently. And this is a real
turnaround from where we were just a couple of weeks ago,
where Trump was describing Mody as a true friend and
Mody thought in turn, he had a strong ally in

(01:54):
Donald Trump. And what this is doing is it's turning
the Indian but all the political parties in in here
against Trump. They are really uniting and condemning what they
see is economic bullying by the US government. And also
the people of India also are very much united against
this as well. They simply do not want to face

(02:16):
this sort of economic coersion. So we're seeing really some
of the long term consequences of the way in which
Trump throws tariffs around. He uses them not just for
trade purposes, but he uses them to bully countries for
economic coercion against countries for political purposes. And look what

(02:37):
it's doing with Brazil, fifty percent tariffs on Brazil because
the former president there, who is a friend of Trump's,
has been indicted under their legal system. So we're seeing
here in broad daylight the long term consequences of the
way in which Trump is conducting his economic policies and

(02:58):
his trade policies around the world. And it's forcing countries
like India and China and Brazil together. So the very
thing Trump doesn't want, which is he doesn't want a
United Bricks, he doesn't want countries getting closer to China.
That's exactly what's happening. It looks like Modi now is
going to make his first visit to China in nine

(03:20):
years as a result of this.

Speaker 1 (03:23):
What do you make of the fact that stat out
of Japan that it recorded a million more deaths than
births last year.

Speaker 2 (03:29):
Well, this is something that's been going on for a while,
over a decade now. And it's not just Japan, although Japan,
I think he's probably got the worst demographics in the world,
but it's also happening in China, it's happening in South Korea,
and the problem is young people are not getting married

(03:49):
in the first place, partly because it's too expensive. Young
people are living at home till much much longer, sometimes
in their thirties, even in their forties in some cases,
and then they're not getting married and they're not having children,
and gain partly because of the costs of having children,
and also the fact that in Japan until very recently,

(04:11):
it was very hard to get any sort of government
support for childcare to help women back into the workplace
after they've had children, providing support for children, preschool education,
things like that. So they make it very difficult for
young people to get married and have children, and they're

(04:33):
simply just reflecting in many ways the economics of doing that.

Speaker 1 (04:39):
Peter, it's good to talk to you. We'll talk to
you again next week. You have yourself a lovely weekend.
That's Peter Lewis, our Asia business correspondent. For more from
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