Elon Musk is supporting Donald Trump’s decisive victory for a second presidential term Gives billionaire entrepreneurs extraordinary influence to help their companies obtain favorable government treatment.
Federal records show Musk contributed at least $119 million to a pro-Trump spending group, and tirelessly promoted the former president in the crucial final stages of his campaign.
Musk’s politics reflect a broader strategy of shielding his companies from regulation or enforcement and increasing their government support, according to six Musk-company sources familiar with his political and business dealings and two government officials who have had extensive conversations with Musk firms. According to a Reuters interview with. The sources provided a rare look inside Musk’s companies’ strategy to take full advantage of his deep relationship with Trump.
Musk’s business interests – from Tesla electric vehicles to SpaceX rockets and Neuralink brain chips – are heavily dependent on government regulation, subsidies or policy.
“Elon Musk sees all regulations as getting in the way of his business and innovation,” said a former top SpaceX executive, speaking on condition of anonymity. “He sees the Trump administration as a means to get rid of as many regulations as possible, so he can do whatever he wants, as quickly as he wants.”
Musk endorsed Trump on July 13, the day the candidate was shot in the ear in a Pennsylvania assassination attempt. Musk’s donation financed a broader get-out-the-vote effort as Trump faces a tough challenge after Vice President Kamala Harris replaced President Joe Biden as the Democratic presidential nominee in July. Musk spent election night with the president-elect at his Mar-a-Lago club in Florida, and Trump has said he will name Musk as his administration’s “efficiency czar.”
Tesla, SpaceX, Neuralink and Musk did not respond to requests for comment. The Trump campaign called Musk a “once-in-a-generation industry leader” in a statement to Reuters, adding that “the broken federal bureaucracy will certainly benefit from his ideas and efficiency.”
Musk once built his image primarily around fighting climate change by reducing pollution, building electric cars and rockets that could one day help humans escape a dying Earth to Mars . He is now at the forefront of a growing class of Silicon Valley billionaires who are championing a libertarian movement as a counterweight to the California region’s historically libertarian ideology – which Musk now derides as the “woke mind virus.” Are.
His increasing political involvement could bring his industrial empire to a position where current and former employees could be compared to the Gilded Age, when industry giants like JPMorgan and John D. Rockefeller controlled their businesses and wealth. Had a wide impact on government policy.
Musk’s growing power has emboldened his supporters who see the government as a hindrance to his high-tech operations, including Sherwin Pishevar, a venture capitalist who has invested in SpaceX and Trump’s vision of Silicon Valley. Have advocated for transfer. Cutting regulation will accelerate SpaceX’s efforts to reach Mars, he said.
“He’s going to make America work like a startup,” Pishevar said of Musk. “There is no greater entrepreneur in American history than Elon Musk.”
driving auto policy
Musk’s political rise follows a perceived slight decline under the Biden administration, which has accelerated Musk’s embrace of Trump’s right-wing populism. For example, Tesla was not invited to the August 2021 EV summit at the White House, which only included unionized Detroit automakers, which produce a fraction of the EVs Tesla sells.
Tesla’s fortunes could rise or fall depending on Trump’s treatment of a diverse range of subsidies, policies and regulatory plans for electric and autonomous vehicles. Democratic administrations have historically supported many such pro-EV policies with the support of Tesla. Despite the Republican Party traditionally rejecting EVs and Trump ridiculing Biden’s EV policy during the campaign, Musk could now potentially protect them.
For Tesla, Musk’s goals include The U.S. National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA), its primary federal safety regulator, will pause on potential enforcement actions According to a person familiar with the matter, this includes the safety of Tesla’s current driver-assistance systems, called “Autopilot” and “Full Self-Driving.”
Musk’s “primary focus over the next four years” will be “de-enforcement,” the person said.
Musk may also push for favorable regulation of Tesla’s planned autonomous vehicles and robotaxis, the source said. For his new artificial intelligence startup xAI, Musk could shape new rules or a new agency, the person said.
Musk said last month that he hopes to launch driverless Teslas in California and Texas by next year and begin production of a fully autonomous “Cybercab” without a steering wheel or pedals in 2026. Tesla would need a waiver from NHTSA to produce such a vehicle.
There are no nationwide regulations governing how autonomous vehicles can be deployed. This means operators have to deal with different regulations in each state. Musk lamented the challenges of the state-by-state regulatory landscape in a Tesla earnings call last month and advocated for a federal approval process.
Brian Mulberry, client portfolio manager at Tesla investor Zacks Investment Management, said a streamlined, uniform set of autonomous-driving rules could provide Tesla the biggest boost of any policy hit by Musk. A “thin, trimmer federal Transportation Department that gives common sense guidelines” would give Tesla “room to prove its case” for the safety of the technology, he said.
Despite Musk’s complaints of burdensome bureaucracy, SpaceX currently leads the world in government-funded rocket launches and Tesla sells about two million heavily subsidized EVs annually.
Tesla shares closed up nearly 15% on Wednesday.
At his brain-implant startup Neuralink, Musk has long complained that the U.S. Food and Drug Administration’s approval process has prevented the company from implanting devices in humans. Musk could use his growing clout in the Trump administration to cut some security clearances in that process, according to a source familiar with the company’s operations.
Musk has long expressed frustration with the FDA’s pace. Some Neuralink employees are considering the possibility that if Musk becomes Trump’s “efficiency” chief, he could fire FDA officials he deems incompetent, a person familiar with the matter said.
rising power
Musk’s plan to establish a looser regulatory environment comes as his companies already face fewer regulatory requirements and softer enforcement of current federal rules, according to six Musk company sources familiar with Musk’s regulatory behavior and political strategy. It is falling. Some federal agencies are already struggling to muster the political will to go after Musk’s companies for alleged policy violations or safety issues, he said, partly because Musk is promoting highly-regulated and There are major players in political industries.
For example, NASA has relied on information from SpaceX in such missions. Boeing’s Starliner as the expected rescue of astronauts who are still stranded in space.
NASA and other agencies often try to avoid singling out the company, said a federal official who is familiar with the company’s government talks and spoke on condition of anonymity. “NASA needs SpaceX more than NASA needs SpaceX,” the official said.
NASA has invested more than $15 billion in SpaceX. Reuters has reported that SpaceX is also separately developing a network of hundreds of spy satellites with the US intelligence agency.
A Reuters investigation last year documented at least 600 workers being injured at SpaceX facilities across the country and found that Musk’s rocket company disregarded safety rules and standard practices. Injury rates to workers at SpaceX facilities also remained higher than the industry average last year, according to a Reuters review of safety data.
Neither NASA nor OSHA, which regulates worker safety, has taken any significant enforcement action against SpaceX over worker injuries and related reporting violations. NASA declined to comment on Musk’s potential influence following Trump’s election.
Musk has nevertheless criticized the government for trying to impose regulations while his company has moved faster than competitors. In an interview before the election, he described federal enforcement as overly harsh and said his goal was to get rid of “crazy” regulations.
“Ultimately, you can’t do anything,” Musk said during an appearance at the All-In Summit, a gathering affiliated with a tech podcast by the same name.
However, the US government does not regulate the safety of participants in private space flights into orbit due to a temporary ban imposed by Congress on agency oversight to encourage innovation in the industry. The Musk-influenced Trump administration is expected to push for softer regulations on this front, according to four sources familiar with SpaceX’s regulatory strategy.
Musk and SpaceX see the company’s dominance as proof that it can handle less oversight, the sources said, even as an unbridled Musk could have unintended consequences for the industry.
A former SpaceX executive warned that taking a lax regulatory approach in a dangerous area like rocket-building could “set everyone back and set the industry back a decade.”
published – November 07, 2024 08:45 AM IST