Musk’s split with Trump over an administration signature priority marks the highest-profile disagreement between the president and one of his top advisers, who offered nearly $290 million to support him and other Republicans in last year’s election.
Over the weekend, as Elon Musk launched a barrage of social media posts criticizing one of the White House’s top advisers over President Donald Trump’s aggressive tariff plan, he was making personal appeals to Trump. The intervention effort, confirmed by two people familiar with the matter, has so far been unsuccessful, the Washington Post reported. Trump threatened on Monday to add new 50 percent tariffs on imports from China to go along with the 34 percent tariffs he announced last week. Meanwhile, Musk posted a video for X in which the late conservative economist Milton Friedman touted the benefits of international trade cooperation — “the impersonal price manipulation,” as he put it — by breaking down the sources of materials that go into a simple wooden pencil.
Musk’s split with Trump over an administration signature priority marks the highest-profile disagreement between the president and one of his top advisers, who offered nearly $290 million to support him and other Republicans in last year’s election.
Musk has also disagreed with other members of Trump’s coalition on issues such as H1-B visas for skilled immigrants and DOGE’s approach to government spending. On Saturday, Musk took aim at the administration official who has been key in developing the tariff plans, White House trade adviser Peter Navarro. “A PhD in economics from Harvard is a bad thing, not a good thing,” Musk wrote. “The President has assembled an extraordinary team of very talented and experienced individuals who bring diverse ideas to the table, knowing that President Trump is the ultimate decision-maker,” White House press secretary Caroline Leavitt said in a statement.
In an interview with Italian Deputy Prime Minister Matteo Salvini over the weekend, Musk also said he would like to see a “free trade area” between Europe and the United States: “At the end of the day, I hope it is agreed that Europe and the United States should ideally move, in my opinion, to a zero-tariff situation.”
Musk, who is the chief executive of electric vehicle maker Tesla, has long viewed the tariffs as damaging to the business goals of a company that ranks the United States and China as its main manufacturing and consumer hubs. Other automakers, however, are likely to be hit harder by the new tariffs, analysts say.