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One of Donald Trump’s top trade officials, Peter Navarro, denied a blow-up in his relationship with Elon Musk on Sunday after the Twitter and DOGE baron insulted him in several tweets.
Navarro appeared Sunday on NBC’s Meet the Press as he and other administration officials discussed the ongoing rollout of the president’s chaotic tariff strategy and the frequent walk-backs of trade policy from the White House.
Speaking with Kristen Welker, he claimed that “everything’s fine with Elon” and denied taking offense at being called a “moron” by the billionaire tech CEO.
“Elon is doing a very good job with his team with waste, fraud and abuse,” said Navarro, adding: “Elon and I are agreeing. It’s not an issue.”
Musk opened up a broadside against Navarro this past week. In comments and replies on Twitter, he called Navarro “dumber than a sack of bricks” and a “moron”, while mockingly calling the first term an insult to bricks. The Tesla CEO was incensed over Navarro, in a CNBC interview, claiming that large percentages of Teslas and Cybertrucks are assembled in America from parts manufactured overseas.
“Navarro is truly a moron. What he says here is demonstrably false,” Musk wrote in one reply to a clip of that interview.
Smiling, Navarro said on Sunday: “I’ve been called worse.”
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White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt attempted to dismiss the conflict in comments to reporters over the week, quipping, “boys will be boys,” but the overall nature of Musk’s comments allude to continued disagreement within the White House and Donald Trump’s broader circle of advisers regarding the manner and scope of his tariffs and the speed at which they’ve been rolled out since the beginning of the year.
Administration officials have been pushed on the defensive thanks to criticism from both Democrats and Republicans over the wishy-washy nature of the tariff announcements up to this point. At various points the president has implemented and called off tariffs against Canada, Mexico, and other countries while this month implementing across-the-board tariffs of 10 percent on most US imports.
He’s also targeted individual countries with so-called “reciprocal” tariffs, though in one case doing so against an uninhabited pair of rocks in the Pacific Ocean.
Markets, concerned with the overall effects of Trump’s tariffs and the uncertainty surrounding his seriousness, slid over the past two weeks driven by losses in tech stocks and other sectors directly affected by the tariff policies. The president responded directly, first by implementing a 90-day pause for his so-called “reciprocal” tariffs and on Friday by moving again to specify that a host of tech-related imports including smartphones would be exempt from both sets of tariffs. Officials said Sunday that this is temporary, but have been unable to definitively say whether the tariffs themselves are merely a negotiation tactic or are intended for the long term.
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Navarro’s clash with Musk sets up an interesting power dynamic in the White House given Musk’s outpouring of financial support for the GOP while he simultaneously becomes an increasingly unpopular political figure, thanks to the chaos of his DOGE-related cuts to federal agencies and bankrolling of Republican causes. Musk’s financial means are thought to be a major factor keeping him in Trump and the GOP’s good graces, particularly given the president’s long-held desire to win the support of business leaders.
His counterpart, meanwhile, is one of a few White House insiders (like Stephen Miller) who survived the entirety of the president’s first term and even had the distinction of enduring a prison sentence after refusing to cooperate with the congressional investigation into January 6. His loyalty to Trump is matched by few, and the president has kept him close.
