Trump called Indian and Russian economies ‘dead’. Here's what he didn't say

Which do you think is the “dying economy” here?One grew 6.5% last year.One had an unemployment rate of 2.5%, and an even lower 1.9% for those with advanced degrees.One saw its corporate bankruptcy filings soar higher than any year since the 2007-09 recession. Of course, it would be a stretch to call the US a dying economy because of just one indicator — its bankruptcy filings — but so would an attempt to label India (first on the list) or even Russia (second on the list) as withering economies, as US president Donald Trump has made. After all, different economic indicators tell different stories — and which ones we accept as definitive often depends more on politics than economics.On Thursday, clearly upset with both India and Russia, Trump posted, “I don’t care what India does with Russia. They can take their dead economies down together, for all I care.” Trump’s anger is about many things at the moment — India’s high tariffs, Russian president Vladimir Putin not listening to him about the war on Ukraine, former Russian president Dmitri Medvedev’s comment about Trump’s “game of ultimatums”, and India buying Russian oil despite Trump’s threats. It all boils down to one annoying realisation — it’s hard to make other countries do what you want. And the frustration may explain the insult, but it doesn’t make the insult true.Let’s start with the easy one — the Indian economy, which Trump called 'dead', has doubled in 11 years…In current dollar terms. And in current local currency terms, it has doubled in eight years. It is one of the world’s fastest growing major economies, despite being the fifth largest economy according to World Bank calculations. We know the scale — it also helps to visualise the speed. If we stick to dollar terms and adjust it for price changes over time, this is what India’s economic trajectory has been like so far. Besides economic growth, what else might count as an indicator of an alive and kicking economy?Trade? Even though Trump says the US has “done relatively little business” with India “over the years” — maybe because of a recency bias — Indian exports to the US grew more than 50% in five years, led by electrical machinery and electronics (546% growth), iron and steel articles (96%), mineral fuels and mineral oil (75%), machinery and mechanical appliances (72%), and medicines (63%). Integration with global value chains? So far, India has been the third fastest growing services exporter — only behind Singapore and Ireland — going from a little over $50bn in 2005 to almost $340bn by 2023, Goldman Sachs research shows. Foreign investment? India, alongside Mexico and Brazil, saw their inward direct investment positions rise by about 20% — the largest increase since at least 2009, an International Monetary Fund (IMF) report said this year.By almost every conventional measure, India is moving up — not flatlining. There have been challenges, like job creation and wage growth, but if economic momentum is the test, it’s nowhere near “dead”.Russia’s ‘dead’ economy grew more than 4% last yearWhen Russia invaded Ukraine, in February 2022, economists predicted a double-digit contraction within a year, and the worst recession since the end of the Cold War. It seemed plausible. Russia had pushed past longtime geopolitical pariahs Iran and North Korea to become the world’s most sanctioned nation, it had defaulted on foreign debt for the first time since 1918, and some 300 companies from western economies had left Russia.And so, the IMF projected these growth figures for Russia. Did these numbers hold up? Not quite. IMF projections this year show how much Russia has been able to withstand — and also how much economists expect its war economy to buckle eventually. So, it has been a bit of a shifting goalpost — the idea that sanctions will create enough pressure for Russia to end the war. It’s not that the Russian economy isn’t under pressureJust that it has been able to maneouvre through it with every possible workaround. For instance, its currency was extremely volatile since the war began. A weak currency makes imports expensive — and, while long a net exporter, Russia’s import bill had run up to $376bn the year before its war (about 20% of its GDP, a share lower than India but much higher than the US or China). Most of it was spent on machinery, electronics, cars and medicines. Expensive things, and not things you decide to just stop using. It drove prices up — and consumer inflation was just short of 14% in 2022.This was happening because capital kept flowing out of Russia. So, Russia announced capital control measures to keep its currency stable. Exporters had to convert 80% of their foreign currency into roubles, and there was a limit imposed on foreign currency withdrawals by individuals. Meanwhile, because western financial institutions practically banned Russians from making stock investments or deposits in Europe, the capital flight slowed down. As a Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) analysis put it, “The West and the Kremlin, albeit with opposite intentions, effectively combined their efforts to keep capital inside of Russia.”Did it work? It seems so. In June 2025, the Russian rouble became the dominant currency in the country’s export payments for the first time since the sanctions. Likewise, the sanctions on Russian fuel were supposed to hit its economy hard because of the large share they have had in Russian exports. And while the replacement of buyers (from the US and Europe to India — China had long been a major export destination anyway) remains one of the biggest talking points in most commentaries about Russia’s “resilience”, a large role has played by Russia’s “fiscal engineering”, as the CSIS analysis explains.Oil prices fluctuate a lot. So, the government sets a base oil price derived from a long-term average to balance the budget — sort of estimating how much oil revenue it needs, on the basis of historical pricing, to cover the expenses it plans.If actual oil prices generate more revenue than expected, the extra money has to be converted and saved in the National Wealth Fund (Russia’s sovereign wealth fund). The central bank buys those dollars to stop the rouble from getting too strong (which would make exports less profitable revenue). If oil prices fall, the decline is covered partly by the weakening rouble (because local currency revenue goes up) and partly by selling the dollars put into the sovereign wealth fund. The outcome? The volume of oil exports didn’t go up or even stay the same — it has indeed dropped, and continues to plummet. Yet, its oil and gas revenue has gone up because of its weaker currency — in 2024, it was at its second highest over the last seven years in rouble terms. It is by no means a foolproof method, but it has allowed Russia to carry on so far. Overall, too, Russia’s total exports did drop almost 27% between 2022 and 2023, but they picked up again by a little over 2% by 2024. (Even the US, which is unhappy about countries buying oil from Russia, did spend $3bn on Russian imports in 2024, its own trade data show.)The point is, Russia’s economy can be repressive, isolated and dangerous — but it’s not “dead” yet.Lead image generated with AI