'Russian economy is set for a free fall': White House adviser on sanctions

the punishing sanctions that the u.s and our allies are imposing on russia and to help us unpack this issue want to bring in one of the key players behind those sanctions his name is dilip singh is deputy national security advisor for international economics right there at the white house mr singh thank you for being here i know you said that last month that sanctions would be tailored to avoid even the appearance of targeting the average russian civilian we of course see a lot of these are targeting russian oligarchs billionaires uh billionaires how would you say the administration uh has accomplished that so far are russian civilians being pretty badly hurt at this point by these sanctions yeah hi trevor good evening you know this is uh this is putin's tragic war these are putin's uh sanctions and these are putin's costs that he's imposing on the russian people for his for his choices uh and so what we're seeing now is the economy in russia is in free fall uh the economy is likely set for a deep economic recession maybe more than 10 percent a year uh inflation is spiking his war chest of foreign reserves is now worthless uh the ruble is worth less than a penny uh his stock market hasn't opened all week trevor and rating agencies are downgrading the country to junk status but all of these consequences are putin's are the result of putin's choices and putin's choices alone we have tried to target these sanctions towards the commanding heights of the economy in the financial sector in the industrial sector of course there are consequences beyond that but again uh this is a tragedy that that putin has chosen it's our job to make that an historic failure uh there's a saying in psychology that you can't rationalize a person out of behaving irrationally is there any concern that these sanctions as effective as they may be in crippling russia's economy might force vladimir putin into a corner and he might lash out some more look i can't get into his mindset trevor but what i do know is that if dictators don't pay a price for their aggression they cause more chaos and the costs and the threats to america and the world keep rising those are the president's words from the state of the union so we feel like this is a moment to demonstrate resolve all i can tell you about president putin is what he said he said ukraine is not a real country he said the greatest tragedy of the 20th century was the breakup of the soviet union you know think about that that's a very flawed and dangerous mindset we have to confront it i do think a lot of people are in support of these these sanctions and certainly saying that there needs to be consequences for russia this is an increasingly global economy russia's economy is the 11th largest in the world if it continues to collapse what kind of impact can we expect here on the u.s economy or on the global markets yeah so first of all uh trevor let me just say the russian economy is set for a free fall it may be the 11th largest economy now but if this aggression continues and the currency continues to plummet putin is looking at an economy roughly half the size with the living standards for his people falling precipitously in terms of the impact to the us you know the the economic linkages through trade are relatively modest russia is our 26th largest trading partner the financial linkages are also modest it's an energy uh where where russia does have relevance to the global economy and here i would say this we don't have an interest in reducing the global supply of energy that would raise prices for americans at the pump and that would pad putin's profits but we are looking at ways of reducing our consumption of russian energy while keeping steady or even increasing the global supply of energy and you'll hear more from you'll hear more about that from us into next week we know the us is also sanctioning the oligarchs that are pretty close to putin can you give us any insight any evidence that that might have some kind of effect that we're hoping to achieve and also are you concerned that they might try to evade some of these sanctions with cryptocurrencies yeah so these are a group of individuals trevor that have profited uh from russia's kleptocracy and now our our theory is they must they must share in the pain of these sanctions so we launched uh klepto capture task force uh it's a multilateral effort with the uk and the in europe and the g7 the purpose is to identify hunt down and seize the physical assets of these kleptocrats their yachts their fancy cars their private jets their apartments that's going to have a chilling effect on the group of people that's closest to putin and that's why we're taking aim at these individuals because we want to concentrate uh the impact to those most responsible for the brutal aggression in ukraine and we're not seeking to target the average russian civilians and look the people in russia should see for themselves how putin has ripped them off for so many years and that they've gotten a raw deal that's what this task force uh will show to the world you touched a little bit about uh global energy a bipartisan group of senators including house speaker nancy pelosi have called on the u.s to ban the import of russian oil the white house is concerned about raising prices at the pump we already knew that with gas prices and a new poll found 69 percent of americans say they support the sanctions on russia even if it does mean higher energy prices but why wouldn't president biden support a ban well let me let me step back for a second trevor no one should doubt whether we've had a debilitating impact on russia's economy as i mentioned the economy is in free fall inflation is spiking the stock market's been closed all week the currency is worth less than a penny but we are looking at ways to downgrade russia's status as a leading supplier of energy that's why we shut down his prized nordstream 2 pipeline that's why we've cut off technology that he needs to sustain energy production and that's why we're helping europe with liquefied natural gas we're surging supplies from all over the world to accelerate their diversification away from russia and yes we are looking at ways to cut u.s consumption of russian energy but again that's in the context of maintaining or increasing the global supply of energy we don't want americans to pay higher prices at the pump we don't want to have putin pat his profits so we can do both of those things at once delep singh joining us from the white house the deputy national security advisor for international economics we know you've been busy we appreciate your time tonight thanks trevor hi everyone george stephanopoulos here thanks for checking out the abc news youtube channel if you'd like to get more videos show highlights and watch live event coverage click on the right over here to subscribe to our channel and don't forget to download the abc news app for breaking news alerts thanks for watching

Channel: ABC News

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Keywords: ABC, Adviser, Ault, Daleep, Deputy, Economics, House, International, National, News, Russia, Russian, Security, Singh, Trevor, West, White, abcnl, adviser, crippling, economy, fall, free, impact, p_cmsid=2494279, p_vid=news-83261100, prime, sanctions, speaks

Id: vCiJV-UJJ6c

Length: 6min 50sec (410 seconds)

Published: Fri Mar 04 2022