Elon Musk has labelled Donald Trump‘s top trade advisor Peter Navarro a “moron” who is “dumber than a sack of bricks” as Republican rifts continue to grow amid the tariff debate.
During an appearance on CNBC on Monday, Navarro – who is one of the key architects of the White House’s tariff policy – claimed that Tesla CEO Musk is “not a car manufacturer” and instead a “car assembler.”
He said: “If you go to his Texas plant, a good part of the engines that he gets come from Japan and come from China.
“The electronics come from Taiwan… what we want — and the difference is in our thinking and Elon’s on this — is that we want the tires made in Akron. We want the transmissions made in Indianapolis. We want the engines made in Flint and Saginaw. And we want the cars manufactured here.”
Responding to a clip of Navarro’s comments shared on X, Musk slammed the economist, saying: “Navarro is truly a moron. What he says here is demonstrably false.”
In a follow-up post, he wrote: “Tesla has the most American-made cars. Navarro is dumber than a sack of bricks.”
Musk’s comments are the latest example of his opposition to the Trump administration’s tariff policy.
In another post on X, he said that Navarro being a PhD graduate in economics from Harvard was “not a good thing,” and he is said to have spent the weekend making a “personal appeal” to Trump urging him to reverse the tariffs he announced last week.
Musk’s comments also point to wider opposition among Republicans and Trump’s allies to the tariff plans, as global stock markets have plummeted in the wake of the announcement.
Monday saw huge losses in European, Asian and American markets. Despite small signs of recovery on Tuesday morning, economists are still warning of huge volatility and fragility in the markets for the coming days and weeks.
Following Monday’s disastrous day on the stock market, billionaire Trump backer took to social media to urge the president to reverse his tariffs policy.
In a lengthy post on X, the hedge fund manager said the president should take three months to allow countries to renegotiate their trading relationships with the US.
He warned that the world could be faced with a “self-induced, economic nuclear winter” if not.
Meanwhile, another “big Trump and Republican Party donor” told Rolling Stone: “I don’t know if I would be this worried about what will happen to the economy if Bernie f***ing Sanders were president […] That’s how bad this is, and there’s very little time to fix the situation and turn the ship around.”
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