Elon Musk — the billionaire CEO of Tesla, SpaceX, and xAI, and the proprietor of The Boring Company, Neuralink, and X — took a pointy swing to the proper this election to help President-elect Donald Trump, utilizing his huge wealth, affect, and megaphone on X to affect the end result of the election.
Musk’s help got here despite 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 choice 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 Department of Government Efficiency throughout a September look on the Economic Club of New York.
Musk has nicknamed the not-yet-formed division DOGE, a nod to a meme-joke cryptocurrency that he’s favored prior to now, inflicting the coin to leap in market capitalization over 6% within the final 24 hours.
The position may give the billionaire govt the facility to advocate deep cuts to what he thinks of as a “huge federal forms … holding again America in a giant method.”
During Trump’s victory speech, he gave his largest donor a shoutout, calling Musk a “tremendous genius” and including that “we have to defend our geniuses.” Trump mentioned individually on Tuesday evening, “A star is born, Elon.”
Many have predicted that there will likely be a falling-out between the 2 enormous personalities earlier than Trump’s four-year time period is over, however even when a fraction of Musk’s plans for DOGE turn into actuality, it may mark one of the vital consequential situations of a businessman serving to form the coverage and rules that govern his companies.
Here’s what we predict a Trump win means for Musk and his companies.
Using the Tesla technique to chop authorities spending
While Trump has gained energy largely by advertising himself as businessman, regardless of a number of bankruptcies, Musk can a minimum of declare that he has been profitable in his endeavors (X however). According to Jon McNeill, former president of Tesla, that’s attributable to a formulation centered round innovation by way of subtraction and radically simplifying issues.
This consists of steps like questioning each requirement, deleting each step attainable within the course of earlier than constructing them again in, and automating workflows. We ought to count on to see Musk take an identical strategy to authorities spending if he’s appointed to his promised position, which might activity him with conducting a “full monetary and efficiency audit of the complete federal authorities and making suggestions for drastic reforms,” based on feedback made by Trump in September.
On Tuesday evening, Musk mentioned he would look to trim the fats of all authorities companies, livestreaming a Q&A as he flew on a personal jet from Texas to observe the election outcomes with Trump at Mar-a-Lago.
“There’s plenty 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 have to transition them to extra productive roles within the non-public sector.”
Musk famous that job cuts could be finished “in a humane method” and floated the thought of paying authorities staff for 2 years whereas they searched for brand new jobs. He additionally mused about imposing time period limits on bureaucrats.
“We nonetheless need to see rules, they simply must be needed,” he mentioned. “I liken it to referees on a area. You don’t need to haven’t any referees, however you don’t need to have extra referees than gamers. That’s loopy.”
How an “EV mandate,” or lack of 1, may have an effect on Tesla
Musk’s companies have obtained authorities help throughout quite a few administrations. Most not too long ago, Tesla benefitted from the Biden administration’s Inflation Reduction Act, which supplied a whole lot of billions in subsidies for investing in renewable vitality tasks, in addition to EV tax credit for patrons.
Tesla has earned greater than $2 billion in 2024 from clear air credit that it sells to different automakers below Environmental Protection Agency guidelines.
Now Trump, who has talked beforehand about ending a nonexistent “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 size and scope that’s unmatched within the EV trade and this dynamic may give Musk and Tesla a transparent aggressive benefit in a non-subsidy atmosphere,” Wedbush analyst Dan Ives mentioned.
Tesla inventory was up nearly 15% mid-day Wednesday.
Accelerating SpaceX’s mission to Mars
SpaceX stands to learn from the Trump administration, too. During his first time period, Trump enacted quite a few main modifications to American area coverage, together with standing up the U.S. Space Force and reestablishing the National Space 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. But the 2024 Republican Party platform included a transparent, albeit transient, paragraph that area was a key rising trade wherein America ought to play a number one position: The nation will ship astronauts “again to the moon, and onward to Mars,” the doc states.
In current weeks, Trump has considerably upped his speak of area exploration. At an October 24 rally, he gave SpaceX’s crewed missions to Mars his blessing: “We will land an American astronaut on Mars. Thank you, Elon. Get going, get that spaceship going, Elon.” In a separate speech, he mentioned he wished “to succeed in Mars earlier than the top of my time period.”
The subsequent Earth-Mars switch window is in 2026, so an uncrewed mission to Mars may certainly happen earlier than the top 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 newest timeline that Musk himself has given for SpaceX’s plans for the Red Planet: “The first Starships to Mars will launch in 2 years … If these landings go properly, then the primary crewed flights to Mars will likely be in 4 years,” he mentioned on X.
Hitting these timelines may require modifications throughout the Federal Aviation Administration, which regulates business launches within the United States. SpaceX has been waging an more and more public disagreement over the FAA’s purported lack of ability to maintain up with the tempo of economic innovation. The company’s “superfluous” delays, as SpaceX put it in a current weblog submit, might be a first-rate goal for Musk’s proposed Department of Government Efficiency.
Musk isn’t the one area billionaire wanting 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 Post, owned by Bezos, introduced it might 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 invest already on potential ripple results.
More than 200 advertisers have stopped promoting on X since Musk took over, together with Apple, Disney, IBM, Paramount, and Sony. Musk thinks that can change now that Trump has received the White House.
A current international survey performed by market analysis agency Kantar discovered that 26% of entrepreneurs plan to lower spending on X in 2025 attributable to issues that excessive content material on the platform may injury their manufacturers. Still, throughout Musk’s current look on the Joe Rogan Experience podcast, he mentioned, “I believe if Trump wins, we’ll see in all probability a lot of the boycott elevate.”
X has additionally been the main target of a number of federal investigations, together with from the Federal Trade Commission, which has investigated the platform’s privateness practices below Musk, of whom FTC chair Lina Khan has been brazenly essential. In late October, Musk mentioned, “She will likely be fired quickly.”
Musk has additional gone head-to-head with the Securities and Exchange Commission through the years. Last 12 months, 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.
Meanwhile, Musk’s AI firm, xAI — which is reportedly hoping to lift a number of billion {dollars} atop its current $6 billion Series 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 strategy from Trump, one the place he depends on current laws relatively than passing any new legal guidelines.
Matt Mittelsteadt, a analysis fellow at George Mason University, thinks the most important impression to AI may come from commerce insurance policies. Trump has proposed a ten% tariff on all U.S. imports and 60% on Chinese-made merchandise, which may have an financial impression on the AI sector.
