United States President Donald Trump suggested on Tuesday that his efficiency department should review the subsidies that Tesla CEO Elon Musk’s companies have received.
Trump’s comments come after billionaire Elon Musk renewed his criticism on Monday of Trump’s sweeping tax cut and spending bill, vowing to unseat lawmakers who backed it after campaigning on limiting government spending.
“Elon may get more subsidy than any human being in history, by far, and without subsidies, Elon would probably have to close up shop and head back home to South Africa. No more Rocket launches, Satellites, or Electric Car Production, and our Country would save a FORTUNE. Perhaps we should have DOGE take a good, hard, look at this? BIG MONEY TO BE SAVED!!!,” Trump said in a post on his social media platform, Truth Social.
In response, Musk, on his own social media platform X, said: “I am literally saying CUT IT ALL. Now”.
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After weeks of relative silence following a feud with Trump over the legislation, Musk rejoined the debate on Saturday as the Senate took up the package. Musk called the bill “utterly insane and destructive” in a post on X.
On Monday, he ramped up his criticism, saying lawmakers who had campaigned on cutting spending but backed the bill “should hang their heads in shame!”
“And they will lose their primary next year if it is the last thing I do on this Earth,” Musk said.
The Tesla and SpaceX CEO called again for a new political party, saying the bill’s massive spending indicated “that we live in a one-party country – the PORKY PIG PARTY!!”
“Time for a new political party that actually cares about the people,” he wrote.
Musk’s criticism of the bill has caused a rift in his relationship with Trump, marking a dramatic shift after the tech billionaire spent nearly US$300 million (HK$2.35 billion) on Trump’s re-election campaign and led the administration’s controversial Department of Government Efficiency (Doge), a federal cost-cutting initiative.
Musk, the world’s richest man, has argued that the legislation would greatly increase the national debt and erase the savings he said he had achieved through Doge.
It remains unclear how much sway Musk has over Congress or what effect his opinions might have on the bill’s passage, which has entered its final stages.
The bill was debated in the Senate into early Tuesday as senators voted in a marathon session known as a “vote-a-rama”. This session features a series of amendments by Republicans and the minority Democrats. It was part of the arcane process Republicans were using to bypass Senate rules that normally require 60 of the chamber’s 100 members to agree on legislation.
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If it passes there, it must still get House of Representatives approval. Trump has been advocating for the bill’s passage for weeks, applying pressure on critics within the Republican Party.
But senators eyeing the 2026 midterm congressional elections were divided over provisions that would strip around US$1 trillion in subsidised healthcare from millions of the poorest Americans and add more than US$3.3 trillion to the nation’s already yawning budget deficits over a decade.
Trump wants to have the package on his desk by the time Independence Day festivities begin on Friday.
Trump defended the bill in a series of Truth Social posts overnight Tuesday as “perhaps the greatest and most important of its kind in history” and said failure to pass would mean a “whopping 68 per cent tax increase, the largest in history”.
Additional reporting by Agence France-Presse
