Musk wants Trump to cancel tariffs – WaPo

The tech mogul and government efficiency czar has reportedly appealed directly to the US president urging him to reconsider the levies

Elon Musk has made direct appeals to US President Donald Trump, urging him to reconsider his decision to impose steep tariffs on American trade partners, the Washington Post reported on Tuesday. According to the outlet, many business and tech leaders who supported Trump’s candidacy have also criticized the move, calling it overly aggressive.

Trump unveiled sweeping new tariffs on global imports last week, including a 34% duty on Chinese goods. In response, Beijing pledged to retaliate with a matching 34% tariff on American exports – prompting Trump to threaten an additional new 50% tariff.

Over the weekend, Tesla and SpaceX CEO Musk – who serves as Trump’s government efficiency czar – fired off 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,” Musk wrote.

Musk also reportedly reached out to Trump personally. The attempted intervention has so far failed to yield results, two people familiar with the matter told the Washington Post.

As the head of Tesla, Musk has long viewed tariffs as harmful to the company’s goals, given that both the US and China serve as major manufacturing bases and key markets.

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Many business leaders who supported Trump’s candidacy were also frustrated by their inability to influence the policy and suggested that a basic 10% rate combined with negotiations with other countries would have been sufficient, according to the Post.

People close to Musk reportedly made direct appeals to allies within the Trump administration, including Vice President J.D. Vance and Musk himself, advocating for what they saw as more rational, pro-free-trade policies.

One of Musk’s associates, investor Joe Lonsdale, posted on X that he had recently urged “friends in the administration” to reconsider, warning that tariffs would harm American companies more than Chinese ones.

Over the weekend, a group of business leaders began organizing an informal coalition to lobby members of the Trump administration for more moderate trade policies, one person familiar with the effort told the Post.

Trump has defended his actions, stating that “sometimes you have to take medicine to fix something,” and promised that jobs and investment would return to the United States, making it “wealthy like never before.”