For all their demonstrative chumminess, Donald Trump and Elon Musk’s interests may be about to diverge.
From the moment Trump takes the oath of office on 20 January, he will be a lame duck president. Barring a change in the constitution, he cannot run again. In common with Trump’s other wealthy donors, Musk undoubtedly sees an opportunity to advance his interests in the four years ahead, whether by rolling back corporate regulations and assailing what he called the “entrenched and ever-growing bureaucracy” in his role as co-chair of the newly created Department of Government Efficiency (Doge), or furthering his “anti-woke” agenda. But returning Trump to the White House is just the start of Musk’s ambitions. The 53-year-old father of (reportedly) 12 wants to bring about interplanetary travel and colonise Mars, to save humanity by reversing the coming “population collapse” and revolutionise humanity’s relationship with technology. This means planning for a future long after Trump’s last term in power – to the 2028 presidential election and beyond.
The most obvious source of tension between the two men is likely to be Trump’s refusal to yield the limelight to a successor lest it affirm the 78-year-old’s status as yesterday’s man. Trump, who has spent a lifetime courting attention, will want to dominate the Republican Party, and American politics more broadly, long after his own presidency. Yet before he has even resumed the office, he’s been forced to fend off suggestions that he has “ceded the presidency” to the world’s richest man, who some Democrats have begun jokingly calling “President Musk”. It is unlikely that Trump will tolerate the perception in the coming months and years that Musk is the real power – and money – behind the throne.
There could well be more short-term ruptures too. Already, Musk and his Doge co-chair Vivek Ramaswamy have come into conflict with the Maga movement over support for the H-1B visa scheme, which allows highly qualified workers to come to the US, and is widely used in the tech industry. “The reason I’m in America along with so many critical people who built SpaceX, Tesla and hundreds of other companies that made America strong is because of H1B,” Musk wrote on X. “I will go to war on this issue the likes of which you cannot possibly comprehend.”
Trump publicly sided with Musk at the time, but he has previously promised to “end forever the use of the H1B” in appeals to his Maga base. The issue is likely to surface again in the Republicans’ impending battle over immigration policy. Musk could also clash with the America First faction of Trump’s administration over its confrontational approach to China, which is Tesla’s second-largest market and home to the company’s first overseas factory.
Perhaps the most optimistic thing that can be said of the Musk-Trump relationship is that both men are relentlessly pragmatic in the pursuit of their own interests. As long as the two believe their alliance serves their respective needs, they will be prepared to paper over differences behind the scenes. But neither of them are sentimental. As soon as that assessment changes, the relationship will sour. Already anonymous sources are briefing reporters that Trump is “annoyed” with Musk’s public feuds.
His partnership with Musk was founded on their mutual desire to vanquish the Democrats. It is likely to founder, sooner or later, on their differing views of what comes next – and where the real power lies.
This article is part of the series: The Year in 2025. You can find the rest here
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This article appears in the 08 Jan 2025 issue of the New Statesman, The Great Power Gap