Houston, we have a problem…
It turns out that not everyone in the MAGA camp is chuffed about President Trump’s Smoot-Hawley tariff moonshot. It turns out that Elon Musk has begun pushing back on Trump’s tariff deluge – this week publicly expressed opposition to policy.
The Washington Post revealed that Musk has made a direct appeal to the President, urging him to pull back on his decision to impose punitive tariffs on US trade partners.
However, the world’s richest man, and Trump’s biggest single political donor – was ultimately unsuccessful.
According to reports, many business and Big Tech oligarchs who had supported the Trump campaign – are now having buyer’s remorse, accusing the White House of being “overly aggressive,” but also for not properly articulating to the American people, and the world, what exactly the plan is, and why Trump is in such a rush to impose such a risky economic regime.
Over the weekend, Trump announced a sweeping program of new tariffs on all global imports – including a devastating 34% duty on incoming Chinese goods to the US. In response, Beijing said they will retaliate with a matching 34% tariff on American exports – prompting Trump to up the ante by threatening to impose an additional new 50% tariff on top.
As expected, this has caused a cascading effect across the US and foreign stock markets, with record losses posted this week.
Tesla and SpaceX CEO Musk – who serves as Trump’s “DOGE” tzar (although maybe not for much longer), made a series of social media posts criticizing White House trade adviser Peter Navarro, a central architect of the President’s aggressive tariff strategy.
“A PhD in Econ from Harvard is a bad thing, not a good thing,” said Musk.
While Musk, a career Democrat (who only recently reinvented himself as a ‘MAGA conservative’ in order to secure a seat on the Trump train), has historically advocated for free trade, his recent viral post on X featuring a video of economist Milton Friedman praising free trade set off alarm bells across MAGA world. Previous Musk calls for a “zero-tariff situation” between the U.S. and Europe – explicitly breaks with Trump’s policy to impose expansive tariffs, such as the 20% tariffs on EU goods.
Elon Musk just dropped a Milton Friedman classic amid the tariff storm.
Is this a stand for free markets or something deeper? pic.twitter.com/5Ox4rcoUQz
— Muskonomy (@muskonomy) April 7, 2025
Interestingly, the Washington Post also remarked on how Musk previously caved on his opposition to Trump’s first term tariff war with China, scared being accused of help the Chinese:
“But Musk has opposed tariffs since at least Trump’s first term, when Tesla filed a lawsuit seeking to overturn the tax on Tesla’s imports from China to the United States. In 2020, top executives at Tesla wanted the company to sue the Trump administration over its tariffs on China. Musk initially agreed, saying that parts of Trump’s package were unfair to the carmaker. But after Tesla filed the lawsuit in September 2020, Musk reacted in a “super negative way” about the decision, even berating some staff members for suggesting Tesla file the suit, according to a person familiar with the matter, because right-wing accounts on Twitter said Musk was trying to curry favor with the Chinese and was going against Trump’s “America First” agenda.”
Presumably, Musk’s opposition aligns with his own business interests, as Tesla Corp. has warned that tariffs increase production costs and expose the company to retaliatory measures from other countries, a concern echoed in an unsigned letter to the U.S. Trade Representative. Musk also took public swipes at Peter Navarro, a key Trump trade advisor and tariff supporter, questioning his qualifications and dismissing his shaky economic credentials on X.
While Musk has not opposed all tariffs – it’s possible that he is also playing the Art of Deal card here, like Trump, he sees them as a negotiation position—as evidenced by his recent behavior, including his push for a free trade zone with Europe.
No can argue that the market reaction to the turmoil of Trump’s hamfisted “Liberation Day” tariffs (a 10% baseline on all imports plus higher country-specific duties), have started a wave of strong disapproval of the current trajectory of this trade war. With stock market losses hitting across the globe, which shaved billions off Musk’s fortune, further underscore his own bottomline stake in opposing Trump’s trade war policies.
Musk’s brother and Tesla board member Kimbal Musk, hit out hard at Trump’s tariff policies saying, “Who would have thought that Trump was actually the most high tax American President in generations,” posted on X.
He then added, “Through his tariff strategy, Trump has implemented a structural, permanent tax on the American consumer.”
This criticism has come less than a month after Kimbal Musk gushed praise on Trump for hosting a questionable promotional event featuring Tesla cars parked on the White House lawn.
Over the weekend, business leaders met to organize an informal coalition to lobby the Trump administration for ‘more moderate trade policies’, according to the Post.
For his part, President Trump defended his policy, claiming that “sometimes you have to take medicine to fix something,” and went on the make huge promises of jobs and investment to “make America great again,” and somehow “wealthy like never before.”
READ MORE ELON MUSK NEWS AT: 21st Century Wire Elon Files
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