Elon Musk's missed opportunity: From the Politics Desk

NBC News

3 days ago

Welcome to the online version of From the Politics Desk, an evening newsletter that brings you the NBC News Politics team's latest reporting and analysis from the White House, Capitol Hill and the campaign trail.
In today's edition, Jonathan Allen reviews Elon Musk's stint in the White House as he prepares to leave Washington. Plus, we have the latest on the back-and-forth in the courts over President Donald Trump's tariff regime.
— Adam Wollner
Elon Musk's missed opportunity
Analysis by Jonathan Allen
Elon Musk rocketed out of the Beltway this week having blown a golden opportunity to make bigger, better and more beautiful changes to the way the American people are served by their government.
The megabillionaire misjudged his own popularity and that of his mission, alienated key stakeholders in both parties, overpromised and underdelivered. The shame of it for those who believe in deficit reduction and government efficiency is that Musk might have found more utility in a scalpel than his famous faux chainsaw.
It's not shocking that someone who is accustomed to making unilateral decisions about corporate strategies, budgets and functions would fail to live up to his own expectations about retrofitting a government in which power is diffuse and the shareholders — American citizens — have concerns that go beyond the bottom line.
If voters cared only about profit and loss, the nation would not be $36 trillion in debt, with more deficits lined up on the horizon.
Surely, Musk can claim success in having cut some federal programs, reduced the workforce and canceled contracts. But it's a drop in the bucket. Even his DOGE website claims only $175 billion in savings — a far cry from his target of ' at least $2 trillion.' And he and his team misrepresented their work over and over and over and over again.
DOGE's most important legacy may be in catalyzing a modernization of government systems — though critics have raised concerns about his team's access to Americans' personal data. And it remains unclear how various lawsuits against DOGE actions will turn out.
Musk could have come into Washington with the modest promise to make the government run more smoothly at a lower cost to the public. He could have taken bipartisan congressional interest in his plans as an invitation to work with lawmakers — the people who authorize and fund the executive branch — to make lasting changes. Instead of reading Donald Trump's election as a blank check from the citizenry, he could have marketed his plans through a national campaign to build public support.
But Musk chose to see everyone outside his insular group of advisers as an enemy, and he tried to vanquish them all with a shock-and-awe strategy more suited to corporate warfare than governance.
By the time the White House quietly acknowledged his departure Wednesday night, Musk had become a lightning rod in Washington. He emerged as a leading political boogeyman for the Democrats while angering some congressional Republicans by slashing programs they like and forcing them to try to fill the budgetary hole left by his unmet goals.
By one measure, his national approval rating is slightly below 40% — making him a drag on Trump. Tesla, his car company, has recovered from bottoming out earlier this year, but its stock is still down about 5% for the year. And while SpaceX hasn't disintegrated without him at the helm full time, some of its projectiles have.
Musk whisked into Washington with a mandate from the man in charge and he's walking away having failed to achieve it.
A blast from the past: Musk isn't the first case of one of the world's richest men taking an influential position in Washington that didn't quite go as planned. As Scott Bland writes, his story has some key similarities to that of Andrew Mellon, who served as treasury secretary to three GOP presidents in the 1920s and '30s.
This time, it was the courts that were responsible for a round of off-again, on-again tariffs.
On Thursday afternoon, an appeals court reversed a federal trade panel's ruling some 24 hours earlier that struck down a slew of President Donald Trump's tariffs targeting other countries, Rob Wile and Steve Kopack report. A second court ruling earlier Thursday by a U.S. district court came to a similar conclusion as the trade court.
By granting the Trump administration's request for a stay, the appeals court put those tariffs back into effect while it weighs the case.
The trade court's ruling would have the effect of lowering the U.S.'s average effective tariff rate from 15% to 6.5%, according to Capital Economics consultancy. The ruling did not affect import duties on automobiles, auto parts, and steel and aluminum.
How the markets responded: Markets initially cheered the possible elimination of some import taxes. But by Thursday afternoon, most gains had dwindled. Experts said the courts' decisions ultimately add another layer of uncertainty to Trump's trade war effort.
How the White House responded: Trump administration officials said that they were considering alternative ways of reimposing the affected tariffs, but were confident that their original directives would be reinstated.
'We're going to see what happens on appeal, and we're very confident in our success there,' National Economic Council director Kevin Hassett told Fox Business. 'But the fact is that there are things, measures ... that we could start right now.'
'But we're not planning to pursue those right now because we're very, very confident that this really is incorrect,' Hassett added.
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