White House Trade Advisor Peter Navarro said that billionaire Elon Musk only “assembles cars”, does not manufacture cars in the United States and is not knowledgeable about tax policy.
“In terms of tariffs and trade policy, anyone in the White House, and even the American people, thinks that Elon Musk is a car maker, but that’s not the case. He’s an assembler of cars,” White House Trade Adviser Peter Navarro said in an interview with CNBC on April 7, adding that many of Tesla’s components are imported from Japan, mainland China and the island of Taiwan.
According to Navarro, auto assemblers like Musk will only want to import cheap components from outside, while President Donald Trump’s administration wants to increase production in the United States.
“The difference in mindset between us and Elon is that we want tires made in Arkon, transmissions made in Indianapolis, engines made in Flint and Saginaw. We want cars to be made in the U.S.,” he said.
Asked about recent comments from tech billionaire Elon Musk expressing skepticism about his competence in trade policy, Navarro said the two had not yet spoken face-to-face, but insisted that “between me and Elon, everything is fine.”
He stressed that the comments made by the leader of the Government Performance Committee (DOGE) were “nothing big” and that the two would sooner or later meet at the White House in meetings with President Trump.
Navarro argued that Musk and the team at DOGE are making a practical contribution to the country by cutting “waste and fraud” of the budget. However, the White House adviser noted that the tech billionaire is not knowledgeable about the Trump administration’s tax policy.
A day earlier, the White House adviser also said that Musk was “just protecting his personal interests” when commenting on the tax policy. He said Tesla’s supply chain is suffering greatly from the blow of reciprocal tariffs because it imports many parts from abroad.
“Elon owns X so he has an oversized megaphone. We don’t care what he wants. We just want the American people to understand that everything is okay,” he said.
Elon Musk in recent days has continuously publicly criticized trade officials in President Donald Trump’s administration, regarding the policy of imposing reciprocal tariffs on most of America’s economic partners. The tariffs announced by Trump last week caused global markets to plunge, affecting super-rich people like Musk. According to CNBC’s analysis, Musk has lost more than $30 billion since Trump announced the new tariffs.
On April 6, Musk posted a comment on X criticizing advisor Navarro as “lacking practical experience and biased towards theory”.
Musk said that Navarro’s Ph.D. in economics from Harvard University was actually “a bad thing, not a good thing” and “made the ego bigger than the actual capacity”, after the White House adviser mentioned his personal education background when commenting on tax policy on CNN.
When someone defended Navarro on X, Musk immediately retorted: “He has never built anything.” The 53-year-old billionaire also shared a comment by American economist Thomas Sowell, writing that “every disaster in American history has a central role played by someone from Harvard.”
