Tech billionaire Elon Musk and his business empire stand to reap massive rewards if former President Donald Trump returns to the White House. But Musk, who has turned X into a pro-Trump echo chamber, will have unparalleled conflicts of interest if he becomes a government efficiency czar.
The potential benefits for Musk and his companies are wide-ranging: possibly touching regulatory issues like labor laws and environmental protections, lower tax rates and the chance for more government contracts for Musk’s rocket company, SpaceX.
As measured in dollars, few people may have more at stake in Tuesday’s presidential election than Musk, and in the past several months, Musk has acted accordingly, enthusiastically backing Trump’s campaign through appearances and over $118 million donated through his super PAC.
Musk, 53, could also play an influential role in a second Trump administration, as an adviser on spending cuts or in a more substantial way — which could be an ethical morass if he comes to wield power over government agencies that regulate his businesses.
Apart from ethical issues, Musk’s commercial investments abroad — particularly in China — combined with his company’s sensitive federal contracts for the U.S. military’s space program raise serious questions about conflicts of interest that could jeopardize America’s national security, according to current and former U.S. officials and experts.
Musk’s electric vehicle company Tesla heavily relies on China, now seen by both political parties as the primary security threat and economic rival to the United States. Tesla depends on China as a production base and as a crucial market for its vehicles. During a visit to China earlier this year, Musk echoed Beijing’s line on Taiwan, describing it as an ”integral part” of China.
Unlike some tycoons or corporate chiefs, Musk has not shied away from weighing in on geopolitics even when it is at odds with U.S. foreign policy, advocating positions on the war in Ukraine that aligned with the Kremlin’s stance. Musk has had telephone conversations with Russian President Vladimir Putin, according to a source with knowledge of the matter, which was first reported by the Wall Street Journal.
Some lawmakers who spoke to NBC News on the condition of anonymity due to the sensitive nature of the conversations worry that Musk could try to push U.S. policy in a direction favorable to his financial interests. They are concerned that Musk could undercut America’s goal of preventing China from gaining access to cutting-edge technology that can be used to build up its military and intelligence capabilities.
Experts say Musk’s potential leverage over the U.S. government stems from the influential role SpaceX has. The company, where Musk serves as CEO, has been called a “de facto monopoly” by analysts because of its dominant market share in sending commercial and government satellites to space.
Musk stands to intensify his companies’ business with the government through his now deep connection with Trump, and potentially target rivals in the aerospace world, such as Boeing, through Trump’s efficiency efforts. Musk has previously criticized Boeing, which has massive government contracts in partnership with other defense giants.
Musk has criticized the types of “cost-plus” government contracts awarded to large defense companies that he says stymie innovation and provide no incentive for companies to finish the work. Such a move would set off a frenzy among lawyers and lobbyists in Washington, whom rival contractors would hire to fight Musk’s efforts.
Trump has given conflicting accounts about how Musk might fit into his administration, telling Fox News in an interview last month that he’d like Musk to be his “secretary of cost-cutting” but also “not in the Cabinet.”
Musk said at Trump’s Madison Square Garden rally Oct. 27 that he wants to cut $2 trillion from the federal budget — more than the discretionary budget of $1.7 trillion. Musk didn’t specify what he’d cut.
Brian Hughes, a Trump campaign senior adviser, said in a statement to NBC News on Sunday that Trump wants Musk to lead a “commission” that will “ensure our government works more efficiently and uses America’s taxpayer dollars effectively.”
“As President Trump has said, Elon Musk is a genius, an innovator, and has literally made history by building creative, modern, and efficient systems,” Hughes said.
Rather than shy away from potential conflicts of interest, Musk has talked openly about his desire to see Trump directly help his businesses by slashing regulations.
“What we’re seeing with SpaceX, Tesla and whatnot is that the sort of regulatory oppression year after year is worse and worse,” he said at a town hall event in Pennsylvania on Oct. 18.
Trump, in turn, has promised to assist, pledging his support for Musk’s desire to send a rocket to Mars.
“I love Elon Musk,” Trump said at a rally in July. “We have to make life good for our smart people. And he’s as smart as you get.” In March, Trump said he already helped Musk in unspecified ways when he was in the White House.
Trump has also said that his administration will have “the lowest regulatory burden” for all major companies and manufacturers.
It’s not clear how Musk and Trump would navigate the ethical questions around a possible government role for the tech billionaire. In his first term, Trump jettisoned traditional norms around presidents walling off their personal interests and instead retained his business holdings — including a Washington, D.C., hotel where foreign leaders booked rooms. (The Trump Organization sold the hotel in 2022.)
Musk and representatives for his businesses did not respond to a request for comment on the stakes for them in the election.
Tax cuts and Musk
When it comes to taxes, Trump has been transparent about his desire to keep taxes low for corporations and wealthy individuals like Musk. In April, Trump told wealthy donors at a gathering in Palm Beach, Florida, that he wanted to extend his prior administration’s tax cuts. His 2017 tax law slashed the corporate tax rate from 35% to 21%. Vice President Kamala Harris has called for rolling that tax rate back halfway, to 28%.
And while tax liability for specific corporations and individuals will vary based on an array of factors including deductions and tax planning, Trump’s tax plan would keep a rate cut for the highest-income earners. His 2017 law dropped the top rate from 39.6% to 37%.
Harris, by contrast, has proposed raising tax rates for the wealthy. She has called for a return to the 39.6% top income tax rate, and she has proposed raising the long-term capital gains tax rate from 20% to 28% for those earning more than $1 million a year.
The Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, a progressive advocacy group, said in a report in September that if the Trump tax cuts were extended for 10 years past their 2025 expiration, 41% of the benefits would go toward high-income households through rate cuts, special deductions and cuts on inheritance tax. (The Trump campaign did not immediately respond to a request for a response to that report.)
Musk has a net worth of $268 billion, according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index. His annual taxable income is not known.
Regulation and Musk
There’s more transparency, though, around how Musk stands to benefit from Trump’s regulatory posture.
Musk, the world’s wealthiest person according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index, has been engaged in recent years in at least 19 separate regulatory or legal battles with the Biden administration and independent federal agencies related to his sprawling business empire, according to a tally by NBC News. And 10 of those are ongoing, with the result possibly in the hands of the next president’s administration.
The 19 separate fights between Musk and the federal government have involved 12 different government entities and touched on a broad cross-section of everyday life: from a wildlife refuge in Texas near a SpaceX launch site to alleged racial harassment at a Tesla factory in California to Tesla’s decision to market driver-assistance software as “full self-driving” even though it requires human supervision.
Separate from Musk’s business empire, his America PAC has been entangled in a legal battle, with Philadelphia District Attorney Larry Krasner over the super PAC’s $1 million daily prize giveaways. On Monday, a judge declined to halt the cash prizes.
Enforcement of federal laws and regulations generally falls to presidential appointees, and experts say it’s not difficult to predict how Musk would fare under Trump’s picks.
“He would be in much less trouble in a Trump administration because Trump shares his hostility to regulation and regulators,” Richard Pierce, a law professor at George Washington University specializing in government regulation, told NBC News in an interview earlier this year.
Musk’s business interests are sprawling. On top of Tesla and SpaceX, he’s the largest shareholder in X and the founder of three other notable startups: brain science firm Neuralink, tunnel builder The Boring Co. and artificial intelligence business xAI.
Each of those six companies has a complex relationship with the federal government — in terms of regulations, contracts or both — that could pivot based on who’s in the White House.
“A second Trump term could very well shift the administrative and regulatory state in ways that would benefit Musk’s companies,” said Angela Aneiros, an assistant professor of law at Gonzaga University and a co-director of the university’s Center of Law, Ethics & Commerce.
“A second term, if it happens, will result in federal agencies’ shifting their focus away from investigations into regulatory compliance issues,” Aneiros said. Instead, she added, the focus of a Trump return would most likely be different priorities, such as immigration enforcement.
While some of the 19 recent fights between Musk’s companies and the federal government have ended, there are at least 10 ongoing, from regulatory lawsuits to criminal investigations:
• Tesla safety: Tesla is under investigation by the Justice Department and the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration over its Autopilot and Full Self-Driving features. Musk has defended the features, saying they make Teslas safer than manually driven cars.
• Tesla benefits: Federal prosecutors and the Securities and Exchange Commission have been investigating whether Tesla improperly paid for a house for Musk, according to a report last year in The Wall Street Journal. Tesla emphasized in a securities filing a year ago that it wasn’t aware of any finding of wrongdoing related to the investigation. There’s been no public indication of a resolution to the inquiry since.
• SpaceX hiring: The Justice Department is suing SpaceX, alleging it discriminated against asylum-seekers and refugees in hiring. SpaceX countersued, saying the regulatory system violates the Constitution, and it won a temporary stay a year ago. A Texas federal judge is weighing motions in the case.
• Alleged racial harassment: The Equal Employment Opportunity Commission is suing Tesla, alleging that it tolerated the harassment of its Black employees at a California plant. Tesla has said the complaint lacks details to support its argument. A California judge is overseeing pretrial discovery.
• Tesla union fight: Tesla is fighting the National Labor Relations Board over a finding that the company and Musk violated the rights of workers to form a union at the same plant in California. Musk had tweeted in 2018 that unionized workers would lose stock options. Tesla’s lawyers say his tweet was protected “employer speech.” Last month, a federal appeals court sent the matter back to the NLRB.
• SpaceX firings: SpaceX faces a complaint from one of the NLRB’s regional offices, alleging that it unlawfully fired eight workers for circulating a letter calling Musk a “distraction and embarrassment.” SpaceX responded with a lawsuit saying the structure of the NLRB is unconstitutional. An appeals court is scheduled to hear oral argument Nov. 18.
• Twitter acquisition fallout: The SEC is investigating whether Musk or anyone else committed securities fraud in 2022 as he accumulated stock in Twitter before he acquired the company, now called X. After a magistrate ruled that Musk must testify in the case, Musk did so on Oct. 3 at the SEC’s Los Angeles office.
• Satellite internet: The Federal Communications Commission voted in December to deny an award of $886 million to SpaceX’s Starlink for rural broadband service, even though Starlink won a 2020 auction process. SpaceX called the decision indefensible, and Musk continues to talk about reversing it in comments as recent as last month.
• SpaceX licensing: The Federal Aviation Administration said in September that it was pursuing $633,009 in civil penalties against SpaceX related to safety requirements for two launches in 2023. Musk said that SpaceX would sue the FAA for “regulatory overreach.”
• Tesla workplace injuries: The Occupational Safety and Health Administration is investigating the death in August of a worker at Tesla’s manufacturing plant in Austin. Tesla has not commented on the death, which is also the subject of a lawsuit by the worker’s family.
The arguments put forward by Musk’s lawyers could have far-reaching effects. They have said in court filings that parts of three federal agencies — the SEC, the NLRB and the Justice Department — shouldn’t be allowed to operate as they do because Congress set them up in a way that violates the Constitution.
On the campaign trail, Musk has at times dramatized the stakes of the election for himself. In an October appearance with talk show host Tucker Carlson, he alleged that Harris might want to exact “vengeance” on him personally if she wins the election.
“If he loses, I’m f—-d,” Musk told Carlson, referring to Trump.
Laughing, Musk added, “How long do you think my prison sentence is going to be?”
Musk has not been charged with any crimes. Of the 19 fights that he’s waged with the Biden administration or independent federal agencies, two have involved questions from criminal prosecutors: an inquiry into Tesla’s marketing of self-driving capabilities, according to Reuters, and an investigation into personal benefits that Tesla paid to Musk, according to The Wall Street Journal. The Justice Department did not respond to a request for comment on the status of those two investigations.
Contracts and Musk
Regardless of who wins the White House, Musk’s SpaceX is expected to continue reaping billions of dollars a year in government contracts including with the Defense Department and NASA. The company is currently the only option for transporting NASA astronauts to and from the International Space Station, due to problems with Boeing’s Starliner spacecraft.
SpaceX has $3.6 billion in contracts with federal agencies this year, according to government data, and that number has risen every year of the Biden administration, despite their rocky relationship.
Harris has also praised SpaceX, calling it “a company whose innovation and agility has revolutionized the commercial space industry” in a White House ceremony last year. As chair of the White House National Space Council, Harris has left federal space policy largely unchanged. That policy includes NASA’s behind-schedule Artemis program, which has a long-term goal of a human trip to Mars.
But it’s possible that SpaceX could fare differently under a Trump presidency than under Harris.
Musk has said he expects different treatment depending on who’s in the White House. Referring to the FCC vote against including SpaceX’s Starlink in a rural broadband program, Musk told Carlson last month: “They take away every contract they possibly can.”
And he has said his dream of colonizing Mars is possible only under Trump, who has been more vocal than Harris in endorsing the idea of humans traveling to Mars — a project that could involve a heightened partnership between SpaceX and the federal government.
“We will never reach Mars if Kamala wins,” Musk posted on X in September.
Musk has not laid out the basis for his belief that Harris would oppose a Mars mission, but it may come down to his prior experience with regulations: Musk has repeatedly blamed the FAA or other agencies for launch delays.
Trump told Fox News in October that he’s committed to the Mars idea: “I want him to send a rocket up to Mars. He made a promise he’ll get to Mars before the end of my administration.”
This article was originally published on NBCNews.com
