Insight: How Musk's clout with Trump could enrich his companies

Elon Musk’s backing of Donald Trump’s decisive victory for a second presidency gives the billionaire entrepreneur extraordinary influence to help his companies secure favorable government treatment.

Musk contributed at least $119 million to a pro-Trump spending group, federal records show, and tirelessly touted the former president at the critical late stage of his campaign.

Musk's politicking reflects a wider strategy to insulate his companies from regulation or enforcement and boost their government support, according to Reuters interviews with six Musk-company sources familiar with his political and business dealings and two government officials who have extensive interactions with Musk firms. The sources provided a rare view of the strategizing inside Musk's firms to take full advantage of his deepening relationship with Trump.

Musk endorsed Trump on July 13, the day the candidate was shot in the ear in a Pennsylvania assassination attempt. Musk's donations financed an extensive get-out-the-vote effort as Trump faced a stiffer challenge after Vice President Kamala Harris replaced President Joe Biden in July as the Democratic presidential nominee. Musk spent election night with the president-elect at his Mar-a-Lago club in Florida, and Trump has said he would 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 fashioned his image primarily around fighting climate change by building electric cars to reduce pollution and rockets that could one day help humans flee to Mars from a dying Earth. He's now at the forefront of a growing class of Silicon Valley billionaires championing a libertarian movement as a backlash to the California region's historically liberal ideology - which Musk now derides as a “woke mind virus.”

His rising political involvement could put his industrial empire in a position that current and former employees likened to the Gilded Age, when industry barons such as J.P. Morgan and John D. Rockefeller held broad sway over government policy impacting their businesses and wealth.

Musk’s growing power excited his backers who view government as an impediment to his high-tech operations, including Shervin Pishevar, a venture capitalist who has invested in SpaceX and advocated for Silicon Valley’s shift toward Trump. Cutting regulation, he said, would speed SpaceX's efforts to get to Mars.

“He’s going to make America function like a startup,” Pishevar said of Musk. “There’s no greater entrepreneur in American history than Elon Musk."

DRIVING AUTO POLICY
Musk’s political ascension comes after perceived slights under the Biden administration that accelerated Musk's embrace of Trump’s right-wing populism. For example, Tesla wasn’t invited to an August 2021 EV summit at the White House that featured only unionized Detroit automakers that produce a fraction of the EVs Tesla sells.

The fortunes of Tesla could rise or fall depending on Trump's treatment of the diverse array of subsidies, policies and regulatory schemes for electric and autonomous vehicles. Democratic administrations have historically championed many such pro-EV policies, with Tesla's support. Musk could potentially now protect them despite the Republican party’s traditional rejection of EVs - and Trump’s ridicule of Biden’s EV policy on the campaign trail.

For Tesla, Musk’s goals include getting the U.S. National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA), its primary federal safety regulator, to hold off on potential enforcement actions involving the safety of Tesla’s current driver-assistance systems, called "Autopilot" and "Full Self-Driving," according to a person familiar with the matter.

Musk's "primary focus over the next four years," the person said, would be "de-enforcement."

Musk, the source said, could also push for favorable regulation of autonomous vehicles and robotaxis that Tesla plans. For his new artificial intelligence startup xAI, Musk could shape nascent rules or a new agency, the person said.

Musk said last month that he expects to roll out driverless Teslas in California and Texas by next year and start production in 2026 on a fully autonomous “Cybercab” with no steering wheel or pedals. Tesla would need a waiver from NHTSA to produce such a vehicle.