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The White House is attempting to paper over an ugly online spat between two of Donald Trump’s close confidants over the tariff policies that have roiled stock markets and disturbed investors over the last six days as Trump himself is doubling down on increasing the taxes Americans will pay on Chinese imports.
Press secretary Karoline Leavitt on Tuesday dismissed an online war of words between Tesla and SpaceX chief executive turned White House adviser Elon Musk and Peter Navarro, the longtime Trump aide and China hawk who has pressed Trump to tax Americans as a way of punishing foreign countries for trade deficits that are the result of market forces and decades-long trends in globalization of supply chains.
Earlier this week, Navarro — a Harvard-trained economist whose fringe theories on trade policy with respect to China attracted Trump to him during the 2016 presidential election — sought to dismiss a question about Musk’s opposition to heavy tariffs on Chinese goods by describing Tesla as a “car assembler” reliant on foreign parts rather than a manufacturer even though Tesla vehicles use significant portions of American-made parts.
Writing on X, the social media platform he owns, Musk said of Navarro in response: “Navarro is truly a moron. What he says here is demonstrably false.”
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He later added that Tesla “has the most American-made cars” of any automaker and described Navarro as “dumber than a sack of bricks”.
“By any definition whatsoever, Tesla is the most vertically integrated auto manufacturer in America with the highest percentage of US content,” he continued before suggesting that Navarro should consult “the fake expert he invented” for more information, referring to Navarro’s alleged use of a made-up economics pundit named “Ron Varra” (an anagram of Navarro) in several of his books.
Musk has been posting in opposition to the tariff policies, which most mainstream economists warn will cause widespread negative effects both to the American economy and to economies around the world, even as Trump continues to insist that the import taxes he is imposing will somehow be paid by foreign governments rather than by importers who will pass the costs on to consumers in the form of higher prices.
Asked about the tete-a-tete between the two White House aides, Leavitt said Musk and Navarro “are obviously two individuals who have very different views on trade and on tariffs” and downplayed their traded insults.
“Boys will be boys, and we will let their public sparring continue,” she said.
Leavitt added that the public infighting between the two Trump confidantes should be welcomed by the press as evidence that the Trump administration is both “the most transparent administration in history” and a haven for dissenting opinions.
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“I think it also speaks to the president’s willingness to hear from all sides, that he has people at the highest levels of this government, in this White House who have very diverse opinions on very diverse issues, but the president takes all opinions in mind, and then he makes the best decision based on the best interests of the American public,” she said.
Leavitt also confirmed that retaliatory tariffs announced by Trump on Monday would go into effect at midnight, making the effective import tax rate on Chinese goods a whopping 104 percent by adding the 50 percent levy on top of the 34 percent tax he announced last week and the 20 percent import tax rate that had been in place until recently.
She told reporters that the phone was “ringing off the hook” as world leaders raced to discuss tariffs with the president.
“The president will talk to any country that picks up the phone to call, and I can tell you, the phones have been ringing off the hook wanting to talk to this administration, this president and his trade team, to try to strike a deal. And it’s because the world knows that they need the United States of America. They need our markets. They need our consumers.
“The president has a lot of leverage on his side, because he has the best economy and the best country in the world that he leads. He knows that, and it’s about dang time we finally have a president who uses that economic leverage to benefit American workers, and that’s what the president is trying to do.”
