TROUBLE IN TARIFF-DISE

Musk Melts Down at Trump’s Tariff Guru as Feud Goes Public

The Tesla CEO ripped the White House trade adviser as someone who “ain’t built sh*t.”

Elon Musk has taken a massive swipe at President Donald Trump’s trade adviser amid the deepening economic chaos caused by the sweeping “Liberation Day” tariffs.

In a Saturday X post, the Tesla CEO ripped Peter Navarro as someone who “ain’t built s--t” and shaded his Harvard PhD in economics as “a bad thing, not a good thing.”

Musk, who’s openly expressed disdain for Ivy League institutions, commented, “yup” under a quote from U.S. economist Thomas Sowell that read: “In every disaster throughout American history, there always seems to be a man from Harvard in the middle of it.”

He also seemed to suggest that Navarro had an excess of self-confidence and a dearth of actual intelligence, writing “results in the ego/brains>> 1 problem.”

A seemingly ubiquitous presence across U.S. television, Navarro has been one of Trump’s staunchest defenders over the president’s controversial obsession with holding to account both allies and adversaries he believes have long been taking U.S. markets for granted at the perceived expense of domestic businesses and jobs.

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“Tariffs are the most common sense route to balancing our trade deficit and thereby stimulating economic growth, and strengthening the U.S. dollar,” Navarro told Semafor during an interview from jail last year, where he served a four-month sentence over refusing to cooperate with a Jan 6. investigation.

Maintaining that position has arguably become more of a challenge over the past few days, with Trump’s new financial measures having already wiped trillions of dollars off the global stock market. Three major U.S. stock indexes— the S&P 500, Dow Jones, and Nasdaq— also recorded their biggest one-day drops on Friday since the 2020 outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic.

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Navarro hit back at Musk over his recent comments, noting that the Tesla CEO’s manufacturing operations are likely to take a significant hit under the new tariff regime.

“Elon when he’s in his DOGE lane is great, but we understand what’s going on here,” the trade advisor told Fox News in a Sunday interview. “Elon sells cars, he’s simply protecting his own interests.”

He was nevertheless at pains to deny any rift with the SpaceX founder.

“There’s no rift here. Look, Elon, he’s got X, he’s got a big microphone. We don’t mind him saying whatever he wants,” Navarro said. “The American people need to understand that we understand what that’s all about, and it’s fine.”

At a videoconference with the Italian far-right League party later on Saturday, Musk called for Europe and the U.S. to move toward a “zero-tariff situation, effectively creating a free-trade zone.”

During his appearance, the Space X founder lambasted European leaders over the perceived dangers of mass immigration and censorship while railing against the recent conviction of France’s far-right leader Marine Le Pen on embezzlement charges, which have now seen her banned from running again for the French presidency.

But his comments on economic ties with Europe, in particular his hopes that the U.S. and the E.U. might “establish a very close partnership” and wishes for “more freedom of people to move between Europe and North America,” appear to put him firmly at odds with other members of Trump’s cabinet, including the president himself.

High ranking members of the new administration such as Vice President JD Vance and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth have repeatedly taken aim at European leaders for what they perceive as a sustained failure to align with MAGA’s far-right agenda.

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Vance, for one, accused E.U. “commissars” of “running in fear of your own voters” while overseeing “the retreat of Europe from some of its most fundamental values” during a highly controversial address at a Munich security conference earlier in February.

Though Hegseth has perhaps proven a little more sanguine in his public statements, he nevertheless wrote to Vance that “I fully share your loathing of European free-loading. It’s PATHETIC” in messages recently leaked from a high-level White House Signal chat group.

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Trump, meanwhile, has also pushed wild claims about Europe. He alleged that the E.U. was established to “screw” the U.S. and has “really taken advantage of us” over the years. He also threatened to abandon NATO-assured security guarantees for any European members of the alliance whom he feels are not pulling their weight in terms of defense spending.

How any apparent rift might deepen between Musk and the rest of the MAGA team remains to be seen. However, as one source close to the administration told Semafor, it could be a battle “Elon won’t win.”

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