‘Economic selfishness’: In a veiled dig at Trump, PM Modi says India’s 7.8% growth ‘not short-term signals’

Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Tuesday hailed India’s GDP growth at 7.8 per cent as he took a veiled dig at Trump’s tariff measures, saying that the country achieved this feat “despite challenges created by economic selfishness.”

Trump’s punitive 50 per cent tariffs went into effect last week, taking India-US ties into murky waters as the president slammed New Delhi for buying Russian oil, which the administration claims is “funding the war” in Ukraine.

“Just a few days ago, the GDP numbers for the first quarter of this year have come. Once again, India has performed better than every expectation, every assessment. At a time when there are concerns in world’s economies, due to challenges created by economic selfishness; India has achieved a growth of 7.8 per cent,” PM Modi said during the Semicon India event.

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#WATCH | At Semicon India 2025, Prime Minister Narendra Modi says, "Just a few days ago, the GDP numbers for the first quarter of this year have come. Once again, India has performed better than every expectation, every assessment. At a time when there are concerns in the economy… pic.twitter.com/MbDg4UkCOd

— ANI (@ANI) September 2, 2025

India’s GDP grew 7.8 per cent year-on-year in the April–June quarter, marking its fastest pace in five quarters, according to official data released Friday. The growth beat market expectations of 6.7 per cent and surpassed the previous quarter’s 7.4 per cent, reinforcing India’s position as the world’s fastest-growing major economy.

Despite this steady growth, US President Donald Trump has called India’s economy dead and constantly defended his tariffs against India. “I don’t care what India does with Russia. They can take their dead economies down together, for all I care. We have done very little business with India, their Tariffs are too high, among the highest in the World,” he said in July.

Meanwhile, yesterday, the president once again asserted Washington’s trade measures on India, saying, “What few people understand is that we do very little business with India, but they do a tremendous amount of business with us. In other words, they sell us massive amounts of goods, their biggest “client,” but we sell them very little - Until now a totally one sided relationship, and it has been for many decades.”