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Elon Musk — the billionaire CEO of Tesla, SpaceX, and xAI, and the owner of The Boring Company, Neuralink, and X — took a sharp swing to the right this election to support President-elect Donald Trump, using his vast wealth, influence, and megaphone on X to influence the outcome of the election.
Musk’s support came in spite of Trump’s anti-EV stance and climate change skepticism, and it’s a pivot from the executive’s relationship with Trump years ago. Musk served on two advisory councils during Trump’s first term, but left them both in protest of Trump’s decision to withdraw from the Paris climate accords.
Musk — who is worth over $260 billion and donated over $100 million to a pro-Trump super PAC – is now poised to be the incoming president’s most influential political and business adviser. Trump promised Musk the position as head of a new Department of Government Efficiency during a September appearance at the Economic Club of New York.
(Musk has nicknamed the not-yet-formed department DOGE, a nod to his meme cryptocurrency, causing the coin to jump in market capitalization over 6% in the last 24 hours.)
The role could give the billionaire executive the power to recommend deep cuts to what he thinks of as a “vast federal bureaucracy … holding back America in a big way.”
During Trump’s victory speech, he gave his biggest donor a shout out, calling him a “super genius” and adding that “we need to protect our geniuses.” Trump said separately on Tuesday night, “A star is born, Elon.”
Many have predicted that there will be a falling out between the two huge personalities before Trump’s four-year term is over, but even if a fraction of Musk’s plans for DOGE become reality, it could mark one of the most consequential instances of a businessman helping shape the policy and regulations that govern his businesses.
Here’s what we think a Trump win means for Musk and his businesses.
Using the Tesla method to cut government spending
While Trump has gained power largely by marketing himself as a good businessman, despite several bankruptcies, Musk can at least claim that he has been successful in his endeavors (X notwithstanding). According to Jon McNeill, former president of Tesla, that’s due to a formula that is centered around innovation through subtraction and radically simplifying problems.
This includes steps like questioning every requirement, deleting every step possible in the process before building them back in, and automating workflows. We should expect to see Musk take a similar approach to government spending if he is appointed to his promised role, which would task him with conducting a “complete financial and performance audit of the entire federal government and making recommendations for drastic reforms,” according to comments made by Trump in September.
On Tuesday night, Musk said he would look to trim the fat of all government agencies, livestreaming a Q&A as he flew on a private jet from Texas to watch the election results with Trump at Mar-a-Lago.
“There’s a lot of duplicate responsibility where multiple agencies actually have overlapping portfolios,” Musk said. “There’s a lot of people that work for the government that we just need to transition them to more productive roles in the private sector.”
Musk noted that job cuts would be done “in a humane way” and floated the idea of paying government employees for two years while they searched for new jobs. He also mused about imposing term limits on bureaucrats.
“We still want to see regulations, they just need to be necessary,” he said. “I liken it to referees on a field. You don’t want to have no referees, but you don’t want to have more referees than players. That’s crazy.”
How an ‘EV mandate,’ or lack of one, could affect Tesla
Musk’s businesses have themselves received government assistance across numerous administrations. Most recently, Tesla benefitted from the Biden Administration’s Inflation Reduction Act, which provided hundreds of billions in subsidies for investing in renewable energy projects, as well as EV tax credits for buyers.
Tesla has earned more than $2 billion in 2024 from clear air credits that it sells to other automakers under Environmental Protection Agency rules.
Now Trump, who has talked previously about ending a non-existent “EV mandate,” is expected to roll back many of Biden’s EV policies. If he ends subsidies for EVs, that could be additional good news for Tesla given that many of its rivals are still trying to catch up to it.
“Tesla has the scale and scope that is unmatched in the EV industry and this dynamic could give Musk and Tesla a clear competitive advantage in a non-subsidy environment,” Wedbush analyst Dan Ives said.
Tesla stock is up almost 15% Wednesday.
Accelerating SpaceX's mission to Mars
SpaceX stands to benefit from the Trump administration, too. During his first term, Trump enacted a number of major changes to American space policy, including standing up the U.S. Space Force and re-establishing the National Space Council for the first time in 24 years. There aren’t anticipated to be any major changes to America’s space priorities, especially its flagship program to return humans to the moon, Artemis. But the 2024 Republican Party platform included a clear, albeit brief, paragraph that space was a key emerging industry in which America should play a leading role: the country will send astronauts “back to the moon, and onward to Mars,” the document states.
In recent weeks, Trump has significantly upped his talk of space 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 said he wanted “to reach Mars before the end of my term.”
The next Earth-Mars transfer window is in 2026, so an uncrewed mission to Mars could indeed take place before the end of this second Trump term. It’s likely no coincidence, given the time Musk and Trump spent together on the campaign trail, that this is the most recent 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 those landings go well, then the first crewed flights to Mars will be in 4 years,” he said on X.
Hitting those timelines could require changes within the Federal Aviation Administration, which regulates commercial launches in the United States. SpaceX has been waging an increasingly public war of words over the FAA’s purported inability to keep up with the pace of commercial innovation. The agency’s “superfluous” delays, as SpaceX put it in a recent blog post, could be a prime target for Musk’s proposed Department of Government Efficiency.
Musk isn’t the only space billionaire eager to make connections with the President: Jeff Bezos’ Blue Origin welcomed a visit from Trump at the end of October. (On the same day, the Washington Post, owned by Bezos, announced it would not endorse a presidential candidate for the first time in the paper’s history.)
X and xAI
As for X, the Musk-owned social media platform, and xAI, his burgeoning AI company, the impacts of Trump’s win are less clear, though Musk has begun to speculate already on potential ripple effects.
More than 200 advertisers have stopped advertising on X since Musk took over, including Apple, Disney, IBM, Paramount, and Sony. Musk thinks that will change now that Trump has won the White House.
A recent global survey conducted by market research firm Kantar found that 26% of marketers plan to decrease spending on X in 2025 due to concerns that extreme content on the platform could damage their brands. Still, during Musk’s recent appearance on the Joe Rogan Experience podcast, he said, “I think if Trump wins, we’ll see probably most of the boycott lift.”
X has also been the focus of several federal investigations, including from the Federal Trade Commission, which has investigated the platform’s privacy practices under Musk, of whom FTC Chair Lina Khan has been openly critical. In late October, Musk said, “She will be fired soon.”
Musk has also gone head-to-head with the Securities and Exchange Commission over the years. Last year, the agency sued Musk and tried to subpoena him in relation to his purchase of Twitter stock and disclosures about his investment in the company. Musk called for a “comprehensive overhaul” of the SEC in response.
Meanwhile, Musk’s AI company, xAI, which is reportedly hoping to raise several billion dollars atop its recent $6 billion Series B at a $40 billion valuation – might benefit from a lack of AI regulation from the Trump administration. Experts say they expect a light-touch regulation approach from Trump, one where he relies on existing legislation rather than passing any new laws.
Matt Mittlesteadt, a research fellow at George Mason University, thinks the biggest impact to AI could come from trade policies. Trump has proposed a 10% tariff on all U.S. imports and 60% on Chinese-made products, which could have an economic impact on the AI sector.
This article originally appeared on TechCrunch at https://techcrunch.com/2024/11/06/what-trumps-win-might-mean-for-elon-musk/