Elon Musk — the billionaire CEO of Tesla, SpaceX, and xAI, and the proprietor of The Boring Firm, Neuralink, and X — took a pointy swing to the correct this election to assist President-elect Donald Trump, utilizing his huge wealth, affect, and megaphone on X to influence the outcome of the election.
Musk’s assist got here regardless of Trump’s anti-EV stance and local weather change skepticism, and it’s a pivot from the chief’s relationship with Trump years in the past. Musk served on two advisory councils throughout Trump’s first time period, however left them each in protest of Trump’s resolution to withdraw from the Paris local weather accords.
Musk — who’s value over $260 billion and donated over $100 million to a pro-Trump tremendous PAC — is now poised to be the incoming president’s most influential political and enterprise adviser. Trump promised Musk the place as head of a brand new Division of Authorities Effectivity throughout a September appearance at the Economic Club of New York.
(Musk has nicknamed the not-yet-formed division DOGE, a nod to his meme cryptocurrency, inflicting the coin to leap in market capitalization over 6% within the final 24 hours.)
The function might give the billionaire government the facility to suggest deep cuts to what he thinks of as a “huge federal paperwork … holding again America in an enormous approach.”
Throughout Trump’s victory speech, he gave his greatest donor a shoutout, calling him a “tremendous genius” and including that “we have to shield our geniuses.” Trump mentioned individually on Tuesday night time, “A star is born, Elon.”
Many have predicted that there will likely be a falling-out between the 2 big personalities earlier than Trump’s four-year time period is over, however even when a fraction of Musk’s plans for DOGE change into actuality, it might mark some of the consequential cases of a businessman serving to form the coverage and laws that govern his companies.
Right here’s what we predict a Trump win means for Musk and his companies.
Whereas Trump has gained energy largely by marketing himself as a very good businessman, regardless of a number of bankruptcies, Musk can at the least declare that he has been profitable in his endeavors (X notwithstanding). In response to Jon McNeill, former president of Tesla, that’s as a result of a formulation that’s centered round innovation through subtraction and radically simplifying issues.
This contains steps like questioning each requirement, deleting each step doable within the course of earlier than constructing them again in, and automating workflows. We must always count on to see Musk take an identical method to authorities spending if he’s appointed to his promised function, which might activity him with conducting a “full monetary and efficiency audit of all the federal authorities and making suggestions for drastic reforms,” in response to comments made by Trump in September.
On Tuesday night time, Musk mentioned he would look to trim the fats of all authorities companies, livestreaming a Q&A as he flew on a non-public jet from Texas to observe the election outcomes with Trump at Mar-a-Lago.
“There’s a number of duplicate accountability the place a number of companies even have overlapping portfolios,” Musk mentioned. “There’s lots of people that work for the federal government that we simply must transition them to extra productive roles within the personal sector.”
Musk famous that job cuts could be finished “in a humane approach” and floated the concept of paying authorities workers for 2 years whereas they searched for brand spanking new jobs. He additionally mused about imposing time period limits on bureaucrats.
“We nonetheless need to see laws, they only should be essential,” he mentioned. “I liken it to referees on a area. You don’t need to don’t have any referees, however you don’t need to have extra referees than gamers. That’s loopy.”
How an ‘EV mandate,’ or lack of 1, might have an effect on Tesla
Musk’s companies have themselves obtained authorities help throughout quite a few administrations. Most just lately, Tesla benefitted from the Biden Administration’s Inflation Discount Act, which offered tons of of billions in subsidies for investing in renewable power tasks, in addition to EV tax credit for consumers.
Tesla has earned more than $2 billion in 2024 from clear air credit that it sells to different automakers below Environmental Safety Company guidelines.
Now Trump, who has talked beforehand about ending a non-existent “EV mandate,” is anticipated to roll again a lot of Biden’s EV insurance policies. If he ends subsidies for EVs, that might be extra excellent news for Tesla on condition that a lot of its rivals are nonetheless attempting to catch as much as it.
“Tesla has the dimensions and scope that’s unmatched within the EV business and this dynamic might give Musk and Tesla a transparent aggressive benefit in a non-subsidy surroundings,” Wedbush analyst Dan Ives said.
Tesla inventory is up virtually 15% Wednesday.
Accelerating SpaceX’s mission to Mars
SpaceX stands to learn from the Trump administration, too. Throughout his first time period, Trump enacted quite a lot of main modifications to American area coverage, together with standing up the U.S. Area Power and re-establishing the Nationwide Area Council for the primary time in 24 years. There aren’t anticipated to be any main modifications to America’s area priorities, particularly its flagship program to return people to the moon, Artemis. However the 2024 Republican Party platform included a transparent, albeit temporary, paragraph that area was a key rising business through which America ought to play a number one function: the nation will ship astronauts “again to the moon, and onward to Mars,” the doc states.
In current weeks, Trump has considerably upped his discuss of area exploration. At an October 24 rally, he gave SpaceX’s crewed missions to Mars his blessing: “We are going to land an American astronaut on Mars. Thanks, Elon. Get going, get that spaceship going, Elon.” In a separate speech, he mentioned he wished “to succeed in Mars earlier than the tip of my time period.”
The following Earth-Mars switch window is in 2026, so an uncrewed mission to Mars might certainly happen earlier than the tip of this second Trump time period. It’s probably no coincidence, given the time Musk and Trump spent collectively on the marketing campaign path, that that is the latest timeline that Musk himself has given for SpaceX’s plans for the Purple Planet: “The primary Starships to Mars will launch in 2 years…If these landings go nicely, then the primary crewed flights to Mars will likely be in 4 years,” he said on X.
Hitting these timelines might require modifications inside the Federal Aviation Administration, which regulates industrial launches in the USA. SpaceX has been waging an more and more public disagreement over the FAA’s purported incapability to maintain up with the tempo of economic innovation. The company’s “superfluous” delays, as SpaceX put it in a recent blog post, might be a chief goal for Musk’s proposed Division of Authorities Effectivity.
Musk isn’t the one area billionaire desperate to make connections with the President: Jeff Bezos’ Blue Origin welcomed a go to from Trump on the finish of October. (On the identical day, the Washington Submit, owned by Bezos, introduced it could not endorse a presidential candidate for the primary time within the paper’s historical past.)
X and xAI
As for X, the Musk-owned social media platform, and xAI, his burgeoning AI firm, the impacts of Trump’s win are much less clear, although Musk has begun to take a position already on potential ripple results.
Greater than 200 advertisers have stopped promoting on X since Musk took over, together with Apple, Disney, IBM, Paramount, and Sony. Musk thinks that may change now that Trump has received the White Home.
A recent global survey carried out by market analysis agency Kantar discovered that 26% of entrepreneurs plan to lower spending on X in 2025 as a result of issues that excessive content material on the platform might harm their manufacturers. Nonetheless, throughout Musk’s current look on the Joe Rogan Expertise podcast, he mentioned, “I feel if Trump wins, we’ll see in all probability many of the boycott carry.”
X has additionally been the main target of a number of federal investigations, together with from the Federal Commerce Fee, which has investigated the platform’s privateness practices below Musk, of whom FTC Chair Lina Khan has been brazenly important. In late October, Musk mentioned, “She will likely be fired quickly.”
Musk has additionally gone head-to-head with the Securities and Trade Fee through the years. Final yr, the company sued Musk and tried to subpoena him in relation to his buy of Twitter inventory and disclosures about his funding within the firm. Musk known as for a “complete overhaul” of the SEC in response.
In the meantime, Musk’s AI firm, xAI, which is reportedly hoping to boost a number of billion {dollars} atop its current $6 billion Sequence B at a $40 billion valuation – would possibly profit from an absence of AI regulation from the Trump administration. Experts say they count on a light-touch regulation method from Trump, one the place he depends on present laws quite than passing any new legal guidelines.
Matt Mittlesteadt, a analysis fellow at George Mason College, thinks the largest influence to AI might come from commerce insurance policies. Trump has proposed a ten% tariff on all U.S. imports and 60% on Chinese language-made merchandise, which might have an financial influence on the AI sector.
