Elon Musk spent Tuesday morning slinging insults at one of President Donald Trump’s top trade advisors Peter Navarro. The billionaire oligarch referred to Navarro as a “moron” who’s “dumber than a sack of bricks,” dubbing him “Peter Retarrdo,” as new reports surface that Musk is privately lobbying to put a stop to Trump’s tariffs on goods coming from almost every country in the world.
Musk appears to be upset that Navarro criticized the way that Tesla manufactures cars during an appearance on CNBC on Monday, smirking when Andrew Ross Sorkin pointed out that Trump calls Musk a “genius.”
“Elon’s a car manufacturer, but he’s not a car manufacturer. He’s a car assembler in many cases,” Navarro said. “If you go to his Texas plant, a good part of the engines that he gets, which in the EV case is the batteries come from Japan and come from China. The electronics come from Taiwan.”
Musk saw the clip on X Tuesday, calling Navarro childish names but also insisting that he was completely wrong about how Tesla cars are produced in the U.S. “Tesla has the most American-made cars. Navarro is dumber than a sack of bricks,” Musk tweeted, tagging both Navarro’s X account and a far-right account called @IfindRetards.
“By any definition whatsoever, Tesla is the most vertically integrated auto manufacturer in America with the highest percentage of US content,” Musk wrote. “Navarro should ask the fake expert he invented, Ron Vara.”
Ron Vara is a reference to the person Navarro invented to use in his 2011 book Death by China, billed as a Harvard economics expert in the book but doesn’t actually exist. Ron Vara is just an anagram of Navarro. When it was discovered that Navarro had invented a fake expert, the publisher added a note to the beginning of the book for future editions.
Musk, who has long promoted free trade policies, is clearly upset with the tariffs that Trump announced last week on virtually every country around the world, including some of America’s closest allies. Most countries were hit with at least a 10% tariff, though many other countries have seen shockingly high tariffs above and beyond that, which are scheduled to take effect at midnight tonight. China, for example, was slapped with a 34% tariff on top of the existing 20% tariff that he already imposed. On Tuesday, the admin raised the total tariff on China to 104%.
Musk has been destroying the U.S. federal government with his so-called Department of Government Efficiency, a job he clearly relishes. But the tariff fight is the first visible tension between Musk and Trump since they first allied formally in the summer of 2024 during the presidential election campaign. Musk spent roughly a quarter of a billion dollars to help get Trump elected and it was widely understood that Musk would benefit from being able to unilaterally choose which contracts would get cut. None of Musk’s contracts through SpaceX have been slashed, of course.
But this rift over tariffs seems to be real, according to new reporting from the Washington Post. Musk has been lobbying behind the scenes for Trump to scale back his tariff plan, but so far it hasn’t succeeded. Other billionaires who backed Trump with generous donations to his inauguration fund are also reportedly upset that Trump is currently destroying the U.S. economy with self-sabotaging policies. But it doesn’t seem like any of that anger is breaking through to the president.
Americans of all political persuasions seem to be nervous about what lies ahead for the U.S. economy if Trump doesn’t back down from his tariff threats. U.S. Trade Representative Jamieson Greer testified to Congress about the tariffs on Tuesday, defending them as something that made sense to bring jobs back to the U.S. “This is not a trade war. Most countries have said they’re not going to retaliate,” Greer insisted when asked by Sen. Tina Smith, a Democrat from Minnesota, about what is very obviously a trade war.
The tariffs have sent stocks lower over the past week, but the markets were in positive territory Tuesday as some traders seem to hold out hope that Trump will back down. Many people believe Trump’s tariff ploys are just a negotiating tactic. But even if that were true, the instability and threat of tariffs have created a problem that’s likely to roil the U.S. economy for generations. Trump has effectively declared war against the entire world, and countries are now figuring out ways to route around the U.S. since it’s now widely seen as an unreliable trade partner. Hedge funds are piling up record short bets, according to CNBC, and it’s generally a bad sign when the big money believes things are going to get worse.
When the White House was asked about the spat between Musk and Navarro on Tuesday, spokesperson Karoline Leavitt told CNBC that everything was fine, seeming to believe that reality show antics are just all part of the Trump circus.
“Whatever,” Leavitt told CNBC’s Eamon Javers according to a post on X. “We are the most transparent administration in history expressing our disagreements in public.”
