Will China break up the Trump-Musk bromance?

Is Elon Musk, Donald Trump’s self-styled “first buddy”, likely to fall out with Trump over China or, instead, moderate the President-elect’s hawkish attitude towards it?

The love fest between Musk and Trump has seen Musk muscling in on a phone call between Trump and Ukraine’s President Zelensky, and on Trump family photos and occasions, such as Thanksgiving.

Now the world’s richest man is to be Trump’s efficiency tsar, heading up the Department of Government Efficiency, charged with slashing trillions from state expenditure.

Yet a potential bone of contention could be the pair’s very different attitude towards China, with Musk hailing the country as “truly amazing”, The Guardian reports.

Meanwhile, Trump has accused China of “the greatest theft in the history of the world” due its soaring trade deficit with the superpower and is threatening to slap tariffs of 60% on Chinese goods coming into the US and 100% on electric vehicles.

“Tariffs are the greatest thing ever invented,” Trump said at a campaign rally in Flint, Michigan, Newsweek reports.

Trump has also chosen Michael Waltz as his national security advisor who refers to China as “an existential threat,” according to the Financial Times.

Tariffs would undoubtedly hurt Musk’s business interests as electric vehicles are a pillar of the billionaire’s empire.

The South African-born mogul’s main Tesla factory is based in Shanghai and the Chinese authorities have made special concessions to the tycoon in a bid to boost China’s green transition.

These concessions have come in the form of tax breaks, low interest loans and the chance to set up business without a local partner – a first for China.

Tesla’s Chinese production line accounts for 23% of its global sales over the past three years, while a new factory making battery packs for electricity storage is to start production in 2025.

“He is very pro-China, always has been,” a former Tesla executive told The Financial Times. “The perception that China is trying to screw the US, that is not shared by Tesla.”

This is despite the fact that Musk’s social media platform X is banned in China and his Space X program is viewed suspiciously as a precursor to US space domination.

Still, both the Chinese authorities and society are full of admiration for Musk, with his business acumen earning him a cult following among the Chinese, and the nickname “the Silicon Valley ironman”, reports The Financial Times.

Musk, in turn, bows to China while cozying up to Trump. With regard to US-Chinese relations this could go two ways.

“Trump and Musk could fall out because Musk ends up opposing tough economic policies on China,” Neil Thomas, fellow at the Asia Society Policy Institute, told Newsweek.

On the other hand, Musk could have Trump’s ear and shape his policy with China, easing relations between the two countries, as the late US National Security Advisor Henry Kissinger once did in the 1970s.

“Their close relationship could lead the incoming president to become more targeted in his China policy and fall out with the security hawks on his foreign policy team,” Thomas told Newsweek.

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