Musk’s conflicts of interest as Trump adviser could benefit him, experts warn
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As co-chair of ‘government efficiency’ panel, Musk would influence policy that could help SpaceX, Tesla and X. Elon Musk’s position as Donald Trump’s co-chair of an advisory panel tasked with proposing huge cuts in spending and regulations has sparked criticism from legal experts and watchdogs who warn of conflicts of interest that could benefit the tech billionaire and other Trump backers.
The fledgling panel has a sweeping mandate that Musk, the world’s richest man, proposed to Trump during the campaign as the tech mogul was pumping about $250m into a Pac to help Trump win the presidency. Soon after he won, Trump announced the panel’s creation, and Musk revealed it has an eye-popping goal of slashing $2tn in federal spending, or about 30% of the annual budget, which watchdogs and analysts say is unlikely without axing popular programs that benefit the public.
The panel, dubbed the “department of government efficiency” (or Doge), is co-chaired by billionaire Vivek Ramaswamy and is just getting going, but critics are raising alarms about potential conflicts of interest posed by Musk businesses including SpaceX, Tesla and X.
Musk’s enterprises have billions of dollars in federal contracts with agencies such as the defense department and include some, like X and Tesla, that have been investigated and fined by the Securities and Exchange Commission. In a Wall Street Journal op-ed last month, the co-chairs laid out some initial ideas about budget cuts to be made by July 2026: they wrote that their first goal is to find more than $500bn in spending that is “unauthorized by Congress or being used in ways that Congress never intended”.
