After four months the Donald Trump and Elon Musk bromance is over and the divorce is immediately very nasty. Shares in Musk’s Tesla car firm have reeled. But to Republicans who believed the double act of the world’s richest man and its most powerful could “save Western civilization” the blow is of a different kind but equally heavy. It is a romance and split that reveals much about today’s America.
The marriage was made by a couple with the best of frugal intentions. There are many sides to Musk; one is a belief in small government and a balanced budget. He was put in charge of a new Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE). He would find ways in which tax money is wasted, That appealed to a central Republican belief: that the government, especially when under the control of the profligate enemy Democrats, squanders billions and billions of Americans’ tax dollars. This is the internal threat to America.
Then there is the external one: the rise of China, its growing economy, now the world’s second largest, its expanding army, its espionage, its technology, its grip on vital raw materials around the globe, such as rare earths, needed for the battery age, its lack of respect for human rights or democracy in a Western sense. Trump has made fighting China, by restricting US access to its exports and depriving it of American technological expertise, a big part of his mission.
Here again Trump and Musk were largely together. Cheap Chinese electrical cars are Musk’s biggest commercial enemy. By imposing extraordinarily high tariffs on imports from China, Trump gave a huge measure of protection to Tesla.
So far, so friendly. The power couple crooned from the same song sheet. But Trump’s “big, beautiful bill” to extend tax cuts for the rich but also increase government spending brought discord. Trump’s bill is not the left-wing ‘tax and spend’, more a right wing variant: ‘cut taxes (on the rich) and spend’. Musk revolted,writing, “This massive, outrageous, pork-filled congressional spending bill is a disgusting abomination.”
Why would he say that? The US government is currently running a deficit of around 6.5% of GDP. It must borrow a similar amount annually to pay its way. Its debt, at present about 100% of GDP, is soaring. That threatens higher inflation. And foreign investors hold around one third of that debt – and they are widely reported to be becoming wary. The ultimate threat is that Uncle Sam goes bust – or the Federal Reserve bails the government out, printing money to buy its debt while the dollar falls and inflation soars. What would that be if not the fall of the US and of Western civilization?
Before the big, bad bill, Musk had already decided to retreat from DOGE to spend more time on Tesla, whose fortunes have been suffering. BYD, a Chinese car firm, outsold Tesla in Europe for the first time in April. It does not help that Musk, once seen as a new age genius and whizz kid, now cuts an unpopular figure around the world as a right-wing Trump-supporting extremist, giving his backing, for example, to Germany’s far-right Alternative für Deutschland.
What does the messy end of the Trump Musk affair mean? Both will suffer. If Trump withdraws government contracts, as he is threatening to do, it will hurt Musk’s SpaceX. But Musk’s counter-threat, decommissioning Dragon, the spacecraft used by NASA to convey astronauts to and from the international space station under a contract worth $5bn, would also harm the US space programme. Both sides may pull back from this part of the fight. Musk’s Tesla, meanwhile, looks vulnerable, to his unpopular image and popular Chinese competition.
Trump may be able to brush off Musk’s abuse and portray himself, as he so adeptly does, as the wounded party, just as he has when he has faced law courts on a variety of charges. One Trump flaw is left exposed: he is no champion of fiscal responsibility.
What the Trump Musk romance and break-up shows more than anything, however, is the extent of delusion in today’s America. The MAGA movement did see the twin supermen, mingling political power, money and technological genius, as America’s defenders, able to save Western civilization against its mortal enemies: the Democrats and the Chinese.
But Trump, so willing to discredit the 2020 election result and spur a violent uprising to try to overthrow it, is not even a defender of democracy, let alone truth, respect for human rights, or decency. And Musk is an extraordinarily clever maverick, with extremist views. Neither can be seen as a defender of Western civilization. Nor are the Democrats the devil. China meanwhile needs to be engaged, it is true, with caution because of its authoritarianism and lack of respect for human rights.
The worship of the Trump Musk marriage was a reflection of the MAGA delusion now prevalent in the United States today. It is not just fiscal balance that has been lost. The political fight has become akin to a computer game, a clash with aliens or between pure good and pure evil. Trump and Musk were Batman and Robin, heroes of the fight to save the West. And now they are together no more.
It is this level of delusion that is America’s greatest threat.
