Elon Musk will reap the benefits of his alliance with Donald Trump

Nora Quintanilla |

New York (EFE) – Elon Musk, the world’s richest man, is preparing to reap the benefits of his alliance with future President Donald Trump, including exerting influence over the federal government beyond the control of administrative efficiency, and this may crystallize to benefits for their business.

The businessman has gone from being a political figure to being a full-time contributor to the Trump campaign, especially after the assassination attempt on the candidate at a rally in Pennsylvania last July, which marked a turning point as he has leveraged his campaign ever since. an opportunity to support him: his face, his speaker and his money.

What is Elon Musk looking for in Donald Trump’s government?

Musk has poured about $130 million into helping Trump return to the White House through his action committee America PAC, but experts suggest he also funded groups not required to disclose their donors and wooed voters with cash rewards if they committed to their cause.

The New York Times reported this Thursday that Musk has already asked Trump to hire several employees from his company SpaceX for senior government positions, including at the Defense Department, which is one of his clients, according to two people briefed on the call. .

Officially, Musk was running to head the defunct Department of Government Efficiency (its acronym in English is DOGE, the name of the dog-faced cryptocurrency he’s joked and speculated with for years) and advocated cutting the federal budget by “two trillion dollars.”

It was the market that provided a clear sign of the weight that Musk is beginning to gain thanks to his proximity to Trump: in the first stock market session after the Republican victory, shares of his electric car company Tesla soared by about 15%. more than the big banks, and this allowed the tycoon to increase his assets by about $15 billion.

Business plus politics: a sum with a predictable result

Trump has said there is a “clear lack of support for environmentally friendly solutions,” but Tesla, born as a clean alternative to traditional cars, owes its stock market rise to the belief that Musk will play “an important role in the new administration.” “Though nothing will fundamentally change for Tesla,” Mirovaya’s investment team (Natixis IM) wrote in a note.

Musk is a co-founder and investor in many businesses, but today he is responsible for six: Tesla (electric cars), SpaceX (spaceships and satellites), X (social network), Neuralink (chips implanted in the brain), The Boring Company (infrastructures and tunnels) ) and xAI (artificial intelligence).

In addition, he donates some of his philanthropic money to the Musk Foundation, which provides scholarships to advance the sectors in which he invests, such as artificial intelligence and space exploration, as well as renewable energy, pediatrics and science education, according to his brief website. website. page.

Musk’s businesses are in any case sensitive to the administration’s policies – they are mainly financed by government contracts, and Tesla, in particular, enjoys tax breaks for the purchase of electric vehicles – and at the legislative level he has already dealt with Republican allies. , of which there are now more, and which can push rules that benefit Musk’s various businesses, be it space exploration or artificial intelligence.

Mutual influence

The NYT compares the role Musk could play to that of another tech mogul, Peter Thiel, who was influential in Trump’s first term, and recalls that the virtual president has already softened some positions due to the influence of, for example, the SpaceX founder. in his distrust of electric cars and said that it would help him.

In addition to aligning himself with Trump on economic issues, Musk, a self-proclaimed champion of free expression, has joined his “culture war,” a conservative crusade against progressive or “woke” ideas on immigration and gender, as your network X, which you’ll probably continue to use as a speaker.

In case of any doubt, getting close to the most powerful man in the US will prevent him from gaining access to the sweetest fruit of political power, since being born in South Africa, Musk will not be able to serve as president or vice president.