Elon Musk’s public spat with Trump’s trade tsar points to crack in camp Maga

BILLIONAIRE Elon Musk sharply criticised Peter Navarro, the architect of United States President Donald Trump’s aggressive trade approach last Tuesday (Apr 8), reflecting what some speculate was the most public display to date of a potential rift over trade policies in the Maga (Make America Great Again) movement.

Musk, a long-time critic of tariffs, called trade tsar Navarro a “moron”, and “dumber than a sack of bricks”, after the controversial economist dismissed the Tesla chief in a TV interview as a “car assembler” and accused him of “protecting his own interests”. And then Musk called him “Peter Retarrdo”.

The Trump Administration dismissed the quarrel between the two Trumpists. As White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt put it, “Boys will be boys and we will let their public sparring continue.”

The Navarro-Musk feud came after days of Musk, who spent more than a quarter of a billion dollars on Trump’s campaign and who runs the so-called Department of Government Efficiency (Doge), continually expressing his dissatisfaction with the White House’s trade policy.

Appearing virtually at a conference organised by Italy’s right-wing deputy prime minister Matteo Salvini, Musk said he was hopeful the US and Europe would reach “a zero-tariff situation, effectively creating a free-trade zone”.

Musk also shared a video on his platform X in which the late free-market advocate Milton Friedman celebrated the virtues of a globalised economy by pondering the different parts and labour that are necessary to make a single pencil.

Navarro is part of the wing of the Maga movement associated with populist pundit Steve Bannon, which wants to put US industries behind the high tariff walls that Trump is now imposing. This faction distrusts corporations, especially the tech sector and the pharmaceutical industry, and it doesn’t mind higher taxes and using government power to punish political enemies.

Navarro’s view has held sway with President Trump for years. His influence was on display in recent days as he helped craft Trump’s tariff policy, and in particular, in designing Trump’s reciprocal trade action which hiked US tariffs to levels not seen since before World War II. It was apparently Navarro who advanced the controversial equation used to calculate the reciprocal tariff rates.

But then, Navarro’s central role ended up being paused by President Trump. In an abrupt shift, the president effectively repudiated Navarro’s hawkish stance, paused the tariffs, and calmed nerves on Wall Street and in Washington.

Navarro spun it as a win that vindicated his approach. “The nervous Nellies on Wall Street, in the media and the business community should take a lesson from what happened,” he said.

Ahead of Wednesday’s pause, many Republicans on Capitol Hill had openly pressed Trump to lower tariffs as soon as possible, in contrast to Navarro, who wrote this week in the Financial Times that the tariffs are non-negotiable.

“There are voices in the administration that, rather than take a deal, are saying: ‘We want to have tariffs as a long-term permanent feature of the economy.’ I think that’d be a mistake,” Senator Ted Cruz, a Republican from Texas, said on Fox News Tuesday night.

When asked Wednesday if he was referring to Navarro, Senator Cruz said: “I don’t think it’s productive for me to throw rocks at anyone in particular.” Yet he praised Musk, who has said he would like minimal tariffs worldwide.

Senator Rand Paul, a Republican from Kentucky who opposes Trump’s tariffs, said Navarro is giving President Trump bad advice. “He’s wrong. He’s a walking economic fallacy,” Paul said.

Senator Kevin Cramer, a Republican from North Dakota, said Navarro’s views on tariffs makes him uncomfortable. “I always have distrust of people who are certain of everything,” he said.

The rift inside the Trump Administration was on full display last Tuesday. Kevin Hassett, director of the National Economic Council, seemed to suggest on Fox News that the tariffs were a negotiating tool to ultimately lower duties and barriers, while Navarro on another segment insisted that the tariffs were non-negotiable.

Among Trump allies, Musk has taken the hardest shots, mocking Navarro’s Harvard pedigree and his lack of hands-on experience in business: “He ain’t built s***.”

Musk represents a part of Trump’s 2024 winning coalition that is associated with Silicon Valley. It is libertarian in its general approach and believes in freeing the US economy to grow and govern the future, benefiting all Americans. It supports forceful tax and regulatory policy and dynamic legal immigration to attract the world’s best and the brightest.

Musk’s brother Kimbal, who is on the boards of Tesla and SpaceX, called Trump’s tariffs a “structural, permanent tax on the American consumer”, in a post on X. “A tax on consumption also means less consumption. Which means less jobs,” Musk’s brother stressed.

Some of Musk’s enterprises appear to have suffered from his association with the president. Tesla’s stock has plunged more than 35 per cent since the start of the year amid concerns of a growing trade war.

In an unsigned letter addressed to US trade representative Jamieson Greer last month, Tesla warned that a trade war could make it a target for retaliatory tariffs and increase the cost of making vehicles in America.

The electric-car company’s second-biggest market is China, where Tesla also has a large plant. Musk opened a US$200 million battery factory in the country just a few weeks ago. Starlink, SpaceX’s satellite Internet service, has also lost contracts with various governments as tensions between the US and its trade allies intensify.

“My job is trade. Elon does Doge, and the twain doesn’t meet,” Navarro told CNN, explaining the rift between the two.

“That’s a tempest in a teapot and it’s in my rear-view mirror,” he said. “We’re fine.”

But then, according to Politico, Navarro has been relegated to the sidelines of President Trump’s trade team, while Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent was placed at the helm and Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick got the role of “bad cop”.

Hassett revealed that only Bessent and Lutnick were in the room when Trump made the final call to pause his tariffs.

Pressed by CNN on where he was when the president made the big decision, Navarro said: “You don’t have to be in the room.”

Asked about the reported shifts in the trade team, Leavitt told Politico that “Bessent, Lutnick, Greer, Navarro and Hassett have all been part of the team and continue to be”.