Musk and Trump’s close bond has defined the president’s second administration, with the SpaceX CEO having taken up a key role in leading the Department of Government Efficiency’s (DOGE) cuts to federal spending. In recent weeks, however, it looked like Musk could take a step back.
Where do Donald Trump and Elon Musk currently stand?
President Trump announced a universal tariff on all imports, with a minimum level of 10 percent for each country, just last week. Musk has said he believes the move is economically counterproductive. His businesses, notably, rely largely on international supply chains affected by the tariffs.
“This has certainly been my advice to the president,” Musk said on April 5 during a remote appearance at a political congress hosted by Italy’s League Party. “I hope it’s agreed that both Europe and the United States should move ideally, in my view, to a zero tariff situation, effectively creating a free trade zone between Europe and North America.”
Musk later also shared a video on X, showing late economist Milton Friedman discussing the value of international supply chains and free trade. In the clip, Friedman said tariffs were a mechanism that “waste our resources” and put a burden on consumers. Many thought the video was a veiled dig at Trump and his recent policies.
Musk recently also publicly slammed fellow Trump adviser Peter Navarro, who helped develop the tariff plan. Musk dismissed Navarro as someone with an “Ivy League degree” who “had not built anything,” and even questioned his expertise on manufacturing and trade.
Escalating his rhetoric, Musk later wrote on social media, “Navarro is truly a moron. What he says here is demonstrably false.”
Navarro fired back, calling Musk a “car assembler” who was trying to “defend his interests.”
Trump previously justified the tariff policy on Europe, where Musk wants free trade, saying, “The European Union’s been very bad to us; they don’t take our cars, like Japan in that sense, they don’t take our agricultural products, they don’t take anything practically, yet they send millions of cars a year, Mercedes-Benz, Volkswagen, BMWs, they’re sending millions and millions of cars into the U.S.”
Trump added, “We have a deficit with the European Union of $350 billion and it’s going to disappear fast, and one of the ways that that can disappear easily and quickly is they’re going to have to buy our energy from us because they need it.”
Despite the backlash, Trump has maintained that his tariff policy will remain in place. The White House has not said anything about Musk’s potential departure from his DOGE role.
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