Trump suggests Doge look at Musk's companies to save money, World News
WASHINGTON — US President Donald Trump suggested on Tuesday (June 1) that his efficiency department should take a look at the subsidies that Tesla CEO Elon Musk's companies have received in order to save the federal government "BIG" money.
Trump's comments come after billionaire Elon Musk renewed his criticism on Monday of Trump's sweeping tax-cut and spending bill, vowing to unseat lawmakers who backed it after campaigning on limiting government spending.
"Elon may get more subsidy than any human being in history, by far, and without subsidies, Elon would probably have to close up shop and head back home to South Africa. No more Rocket launches, Satellites, or Electric Car Production, and our Country would save a fortune. Perhaps we should have Doge take a good, hard, look at this? Big money to be saved!," Trump said in a post on Truth Social.
In response to Trump's post, Musk, in his own social media platform X, said "I am literally saying cut it all. Now."
After weeks of relative silence following a feud with Trump over the legislation, Musk rejoined the debate on Saturday as the Senate took up the package, calling it "utterly insane and destructive" in a post on social media platform X.
On Monday, he ramped up his criticism, saying lawmakers who had campaigned on cutting spending but backed the bill "should hang their heads in shame!"
"And they will lose their primary next year if it is the last thing I do on this Earth," Musk said.
The Tesla and SpaceX CEO called again for a new political party, saying the bill's massive spending indicated "that we live in a one-party country — the porky pig party!"
"Time for a new political party that actually cares about the people," he wrote.
Musk's criticism of the bill has caused a rift in his relationship with Trump, marking a dramatic shift after the tech billionaire spent nearly US$300 million (S$382 million) on Trump's re-election campaign and led the administration's controversial Department of Government Efficiency (Doge), a federal cost-cutting initiative.
Musk, the world's richest man, has argued that the legislation would greatly increase the national debt and erase the savings he says he has achieved through Doge.
It remains unclear how much sway Musk has over Congress or what effect his opinions might have on the bill's passage. But Republicans have expressed concern that his on-again, off-again feud with Trump could hurt their chances to protect their majority in the 2026 midterm congressional elections.
The rift has also led to volatility for Tesla, with shares of the company seeing wild price swings that erased approximately $150 billion of its market value, though it has since recovered.
[[nid:719679]]
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
Business Times
33 minutes ago
- Business Times
US Senate votes 99-1 to strip AI provision from Trump's tax Bill
[WASHINGTON] The US Senate killed a controversial effort to prevent US states from regulating artificial intelligence, marking a loss for the Silicon Valley leaders and White House officials who pushed the measure. Senators voted 99-1 early on Tuesday (Jul 1) to strip the language out of US President Donald Trump's signature tax legislation during a marathon all-night voting session. The overwhelming opposition came despite widespread support for the pause on state AI legislation from GOP allies in Silicon Valley and White House technology advisers Michael Kratsios and David Sacks. The measure was the top priority for major technology companies including Microsoft and Meta Platforms, as well as venture capital firms like Andreessen Horowitz, which back other powerful players. Trump allies in Silicon Valley, including venture capitalist Marc Andreessen, defence tech firm Anduril Industries founder Palmer Luckey and Palantir Technologies co-founder Joe Lonsdale all advocated for including the restriction. Senator Marsha Blackburn, whose state of Tennessee is home to the Nashville music industry, led the effort to scrap the provision. She had raised concerns the measure would block her home state's Elvis Act, a law that prohibits the non-consensual use of AI to mimic musicians' voices. The state AI legislation freeze would have barred states from passing AI legislation if they received broadband funding from a US$500 million federal programme. Before the vote, Senator Ted Cruz of Texas expressed frustration that a compromise he had brokered with Blackburn to keep a more limited AI measure in the Bill had collapsed. Cruz himself, who championed the state AI regulation pause, ultimately voted to strip it from the Bill. BT in your inbox Start and end each day with the latest news stories and analyses delivered straight to your inbox. Sign Up Sign Up Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick threw his support behind the AI measure, as well, calling it imperative for national security and a step towards quashing blue-state efforts to pass comprehensive AI legislation. Though advocates pushed for Trump to make his own statement supporting the provision in the tax Bill, he ultimately did not weigh in publicly. States across the country have enacted dozens of new laws intended to Americans against risks posed by AI, such as unauthorised deepfakes, copyright violations and algorithmic discrimination. More than 1,000 AI Bills have been proposed at the state level. At the same time, Congress has yet to pass sweeping regulations. Opponents of the state AI pause took a victory lap on Tuesday, applauding Blackburn for killing the effort. 'The moratorium threatened to halt kids online safety laws, artist and creator protections, and a range of consumer safeguards and tech transparency measures, all without any federal replacement,' said Brad Carson, president of the AI safety advocacy group Americans for Responsible Innovation. 'Let this be a lesson to Congress – freezing state AI laws without a serious replacement is a political nonstarter.' Despite the Senate's move, the tech industry will likely continue to push for curtailing state AI legislation. That the provision initially received broad support shows that Republican Party power centres are firmly behind the AI industry's wish for minimal regulatory interference. Senator Thom Tillis of North Carolina, who on Sunday announced he would retire from the Senate, was the sole lawmaker to support keeping the AI provision in the Bill. BLOOMBERG
Business Times
2 hours ago
- Business Times
Markets are learning to keep calm and carry on
The first half of the year has been a geopolitical hot mess. US President Donald Trump's chaotic approach to tariffs, escalating military conflict in the Middle East, the continuing war in Ukraine and the existential threat posed to the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (Nato) have left financial markets... largely unscathed? Global equities are in rude health, government bond yields are becalmed and oil is trading in line with its five-year average. The US dollar is the only casualty, losing ground against all of its peers in the past six months. So the remainder of 2025 will follow the same pattern, right? Well. The Taco – Trump Always Chickens Out – trade in equities will be re-examined early this month when the tariff pauses end. The independence of the Federal Reserve looks set to be sorely tested. The fiscal implications of Nato's 32 members belatedly agreeing to increase defence spending to 5 per cent of gross domestic product will reverberate around bond markets, particularly in Europe. 'The interplay of politics, economics and markets will make assaying the paths of stocks, bonds, commodities and currencies this year even harder than usual,' we wrote at the start of the year. The capriciousness of the world's most important person means that staying nimble and being willing to scuttle to the sidelines will remain the safest strategy. In short: Be careful out there. It's your currency – and it's becoming your problem The greenback has lost more than 10 per cent against its major peers this year, sending the dollar index to a three-year low. While that's broadly good news for a world that's suffered in recent years from the home of the world's reserve currency sucking in much of the available investment flows, it should start to worry US officials if it illustrates mounting concern about a burgeoning budget deficit. There's a reason gold is near a record high. In the same way as average government bond yields have returned to levels seen between 2005 and 2014 (more on that later), the greenback may weaken to historical norms. Its average for the past 20 years against the euro, for example, is around US$1.22 compared with about US$1.17 currently, while, versus the pound, the level is US$1.50 on average over the last two decades versus US$1.37 now. Though talk in Frankfurt of the euro playing a more global role sounds like wishful thinking, the dollar's crown as king of the currency world is definitely slipping. Higher for longer is the new mantra for US rates At the end of 2023, the futures market was anticipating a Fed funds rate of around 3.5 per cent by December 2024; instead, it got 4.5 per cent. At the end of last year, it was expected that the rate would decline to 4 per cent by now, but it's still stuck at 4.5 per cent. With the US economy – and the consumer – confounding the gloomy prognosis of economists, the US central bank has resisted increasingly strident calls from the White House (Fed chair Jerome Powell is a 'very stupid person,' according to Trump's latest broadside) to cut borrowing costs. BT in your inbox Start and end each day with the latest news stories and analyses delivered straight to your inbox. Sign Up Sign Up Powell's tenure ends in May 2026. With his replacement likely to be more craven/flexible (select according to taste) in acceding to Trump's demands – and potential successors lining up in recent weeks to affirm their dovish credentials – the Fed's independence in setting monetary policy looks worryingly compromised even before Powell's exit. For bonds, 3% remains the new 1.5% The average 10-year government yield for the members of the Group of Seven has been basically treading water all year – but that means the 1.5 per cent borrowing cost that prevailed for the past decade is a distant memory, with the 3 per cent level of the decade before becoming the new normal. Treasury yields are down a bit this year, while bund yields are up a touch – the latter a surprisingly modest gain given the enormous surge in borrowing planned by the German government to fund increased defence spending. Switzerland remains an outlier with sub-zero rates at short maturities (more on that later). The subtext for bonds is a little more complicated than usual. Rather than central bank action steering the market – the European Central Bank has been twice as aggressive as the Fed in easing policy – rising deficits and stubborn inflation are now the main bugbears for the bond vigilantes. So expect the focus to remain on what happens with the longer end of the yield curve; if investors fall further out of love with 30-year debt, fiscal alarm bells should start to ring. Negativity is back, baby Negative yields were supposed to have been banished, never to be seen again. At least that was the fervent hope of those who rightly fear deflation. However, 2025 has served up another unwanted surprise, with the Swiss National Bank cutting its policy rate to zero in June. In anticipation that the strength of the franc and the inflation rate slowing to minus 0.1 per cent may prompt a further cut to below zero in September, Swiss government bonds out to three years now have negative yields. The universe of negative-yielding bonds peaked at an astonishing US$18.4 trillion at the end of 2020. While we're unlikely to revisit that scenario, what's happening in Switzerland is a reminder that sub-zero interest rates will forever be part of the central bank toolkit. Stock market's animal spirits prove impossible to extinguish Resistance is futile: The 20 per cent-plus recovery staged by the S&P 500 index in the aftermath of Trump's initial introduction of tariffs in April tells all. Too many investors went underweight and are being dragged back in. And, this year, stock indexes in Europe and Asia are outpacing their US peers, broadening the gains and driving the world's stock-market value to a record US$133 trillion. What happens next with tariffs is anyone's guess, so the outlook for corporate earnings remains shrouded in doubt. But betting against investor appetite for stocks, no matter how overvalued they might seem to be, hasn't been a winning strategy. 'The world is swimming in oil' Global oil demand is rising gradually, but ever more of the black stuff is being pumped. Saudi Arabian supply is set to reach a two-year high of 10 million barrels a day as it chafes at its partners in Opec+ (Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries and other oil-producing nations) exceeding their mandated quotas. 'The world is swimming in oil,' as our colleague Javier Blas wrote last week. Even the conflict between Israel and Iran produced just a short-lived spike in Brent crude that quickly faded, leaving it trading below US$70 a barrel. With the Opec+ cartel agreeing to increase production quotas and prices high enough for US shale producers to have locked in their output, oil prices are headed only one way – down. BLOOMBERG
Business Times
2 hours ago
- Business Times
Trump is ‘fast forwarding' the inevitable future of a multipolar world: George Yeo
[SINGAPORE] US President Donald Trump may be at the centre of several global events today, but he did not create the increasingly multipolar world – he is merely fast-forwarding inevitable events, said George Yeo, Singapore's former foreign minister. 'Trump himself is not the author of big events, he's being carried by big events,' he said. 'He will come, he will go, and he will have quickened the arrival of a multipolar world,' he added, speaking at UBS' mid-year outlook conference in Singapore on Tuesday (Jul 1). Moderating Yeo's session was Tan Min Lan, head of the chief investment office for Asia-Pacific at UBS. Discussing the current state of global affairs, Yeo said China does not want to escalate tensions, while the US likely finds it difficult to escalate. The wars in the Middle East and Ukraine are keeping the US occupied – which benefits China, he said. BT in your inbox Start and end each day with the latest news stories and analyses delivered straight to your inbox. Sign Up Sign Up Meanwhile, China wants to maintain its relations with everyone, and Yeo said it is not in its interests today to make use of its critical advantages, such as in rare earth. 'So if both sides stay rational, there should be stability for maybe another five to 10 years,' he said. Nevertheless, Yeo noted, it is likely not possible to separate economic interests from security alliances when it comes to dealing with China, unlike with the US. 'China has always used trade for state craft, taking advantage of the fact that it is the biggest market, and that in any bilateral relationship you need me more than I need you,' he said. This comes as China's strength lies in the homogeneity of its civilisation, Yeo added. 'Every time they are at peace, they have the world's biggest market, a degree of specialisation, (unmatched) division of labour, and therefore productivity, which astonishes everybody.' Security concerns As security concerns pick up globally, Yeo also discussed US-China tensions over Taiwan, where he thinks that the two superpowers are not likely to reach an arms fight. '(China) can just conduct more exercises, add more friction, and eventually convince the Taiwanese that independence is an illusion, but still be prepared to talk and give Taiwanese people tremendous autonomy,' he said. Given Taiwan's current capabilities, such as with chip production through TSMC, Yeo expects that China's interest is to have the former continue as a different system within the rubric of one China. Meanwhile, he noted that the US has succeeded in getting many of its European allies to spend more on defence. But once these countries become more self-confident militarily, they will depend less on the US, which will be reflected in how they articulate their own interests in the future, he said. 'So Trump is fast forwarding the future, because sooner or later, the Europeans will have to find their own centre and equilibrium vis a vis America, China, Russia, the Middle East and Africa,' he said. The international game For others in Asia, including Singapore, Yeo said Asean must 'be wise enough' to not let ongoing wars in the Middle East and Ukraine affect the region. 'Keep the peace in the region – another generation of peace, and South-east Asia will be transformed beyond recognition,' Yeo said. He noted that it is important to understand that the world is becoming multipolar – not just in terms of politics, but also in economics and culture. People must be prepared to speak several languages, understand various cultures, and work multiple systems, and not be stuck with one particular system. This is especially so as the US clampdown on China's tech ambitions has pushed the latter towards self-sufficiency, Yeo noted. Yeo expects some bifurcation of the tech ecosystem, where China will set 'many of the standards in the future'. In the meantime, however, the US enjoys a 'tremendous legacy', which should continue for decades ahead, he added. Meanwhile, as South-east Asia becomes increasingly integrated with the larger Chinese economy, it is important for the region to keep options open, to maintain autonomy, he said. Yeo also expects that China does not want to take over South-east Asia, so that it will not lose its homogeneity. 'We know for sure that we're in a great transition to a multipolar world, but the shape of that multipolar world and how the poles interact one another – that is something still unfolding with great drama before us.'
