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Elon Musk may have bought himself influence over President Donald Trump’s administration, but public criticism of the president remains out of his budget. Instead — as the world braces for Trump’s tariff regime to go into effect at midnight on Tuesday — Musk is picking fights with a fellow presidential adviser: Senior Counselor for Trade and Manufacturing Peter Navarro.
Navarro — a key figure behind Trump’s potentially catastrophic tariff policy — has been making the media rounds defending the plan since Trump announced it last week. On Tuesday, Musk took issue with comments Navarro made about Tesla’s manufacturing process during an interview on CNBC. Navarro said that Musk “isn’t a car manufacturer — he’s a car assembler,” and claimed that the billionaire’s flagship company relies heavily on foreign car parts to assemble his electric vehicles.
Musk exploded. In a series of posts on Tuesday, Musk attacked Navarro as being “truly a moron” and “dumber than a sack of bricks,” while dubbing him “Peter Retarrdo.” Musk asserted that Tesla now manufactures the majority of their car components in the United States.
The outburst was a boiling over of tensions between the so-called Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) head and the convicted criminal trade adviser that have been simmering for days now. Over the weekend, after Navarro defended Trump’s proposed tariffs during an appearance on CNN, Musk responded to a clip of the interview by commenting that “a PhD in Econ from Harvard is a bad thing, not a good thing. Results in the ego/brains>>1 problem.”
The clash points to more internal disagreement about the president’s economic plans than the White House would like to let on. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent, who has been struggling to defend the tariffs in a series of TV appearances, reportedly flew to Florida to try to convince Trump to change his tune on tariff messaging. The Wall Street Journal reported Monday, meanwhile, that White House officials have grown frustrated with Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick’s increasingly confusing messaging on tariffs.
For months now, Musk has operated in virtual lockstep with Trump, rewarding himself with lucrative federal contracts along the way. As the tariff regime threatens his business, and his global popularity continues to decline, Musk has publicly broken with the president and expressed a desire for less protectionism and more “free trade.”
For its part, the White House is downplaying the dispute between two of the administration’s most prominent figures. “Whatever,” White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt told CNBC when asked about Musk’s insults against Navarro. “We are the most transparent administration in history, expressing our disagreements in public.”
