The wealthiest man in the world has been a singularly influential force in the second Trump term—just not influential enough, it seems.
Over the weekend, The Washington Post reported, Elon Musk personally appealed to Donald Trump, imploring him to back off his tariff plan which has sent global markets spiraling. But the president has appeared unmoved, going so far as to threaten even higher tariffs on China, after Beijing imposed its own retaliatory tariffs on goods from the US last week.
Musk’s withering views on tariffs are hardly a secret. His closed-door entreaties came amid public posts on X in which he taunted Trump’s top tariff advisor, Peter Navarro, and promoted a not-so-subtle video of the late economist and noted free trader Milton Friedman praising the merits of globalization.
While Tesla is an American-made car company, Musk has said that the impact of tariffs on the company (which is already suffering from Musk’s ties to Trump) will be “significant.” The same goes for the other billionaires who stood behind Trump—literally and figuratively—during his inauguration. Under Trump’s tariffs, the cost of Apple’s China-made iPhones is expected to soar. Amazon’s global suppliers are set to take a hit. And, if consumer demand dwindles and brands pull back on advertising, even Meta’s bottom line is at risk. (Anyone know if Mark Zuckerberg is still “optimistic and celebrating”?).
Musk has not been the only Trump booster pleading with the president over his tariff plan. According to the Post, another cohort of Trump-supporting business leaders have formed a group to lobby members of his administration. Joe Lonsdale, a GOP donor and co-founder of Palantir, said on X that he had personally raised issues regarding the tariff plan with “friends in this administration.”
Meanwhile, Axios reports that Republican donors are pressuring lawmakers to convince Trump to reconsider his plan. Several have backed a bipartisan bill introduced in the Senate that would grant Congress the power to block newly proposed tariffs. But the White House has already warned that if the bill were to pass Congress, the president would veto it.
The schism between Trump and Musk over tariffs is particularly significant in that it’s the first real bit of daylight showing between the two men. Except for the time Musk badmouthed OpenAI’s splashy $500 billion AI announcement at the White House during Trump’s first week in office, Musk has been a mostly loyal messenger for the administration. But as rumors swirl about his potential impending departure—and tariffs shave tens of billions of dollars off of Musk’s personal wealth—we may be getting an early glimpse of what Musk will be like unmuzzled.
