Trump adviser's feud as world responds to US tariffs and Reserve Bank expected to cut Official Cash Rate. Video / NZ Herald, Getty Images
United States markets are heading for a fourth trading day of losses after the White House confirmed 104% tariffs on China as of midnight
Elon Musk has launched another attack on Trump’s pro-tariff trade adviser
Zuru cofounder Nick Mowbray has launched an attack on tariffs
Billionaire Elon Musk has blasted President Donald Trump’s senior trade adviser Peter Navarro as “truly a moron” and “dumber than a sack of bricks” in a growing rift over the US tariff policy that has rocked the world.
The extraordinary public spat came after Navarro described the Tesla boss and so-called Department of Government Efficiency (Doge) chief as “not a car manufacturer” but “a car assembler” who relies on imported parts.
At the same time, the United States and China are hurtling towards an all-out trade war, locked in a high-stakes game of brinkmanship as Trump prepares to unleash a wave of tariffs against dozens of partners, including more than 100% against China.
Trump originally unveiled a 34% additional tariff on Chinese goods.
But after China announced its own 34% counter-tariff, Trump vowed to pile on another 50% duty – bringing the additional rate on Chinese products to 104%, the White House confirmed.
Beijing earlier blasted what it called US blackmail and vowed to “fight it to the end”.
Musk, the world’s richest person, has previously signalled his opposition to the president’s new import tariffs that have roiled markets around the world.
“Navarro is truly a moron. What he says here is demonstrably false,” Musk posted on his X social network, under a clip of Navarro saying Tesla imported batteries, electronics and tyres, and that Musk “wants the cheap foreign parts”.
Peter Navarro is in a war of words with Elon Musk. Photo / Getty Images
Musk doubled down in a series of other messages, saying that “Tesla has the most American-made cars. Navarro is dumber than a sack of bricks”.
Musk also dubbed him “Peter Retarrdo” and said Navarro “should ask the fake expert he invented, Ron Vara” – referring to a fictional pundit Navarro quoted in a series of books and a policy memo, using an anagram of his own name.
The Nasdaq was down 2.15% and the S&P 500 1.57% in the red after another volatile day of trading that saw stocks start in the green on hopes of negotiations - only to see the gains reversed as the White House confirmed tariffs on China would be raised to 104% at midnight in response to Beijing’s 34% retaliatory tariff.
The White House played down the row.
“Boys will be boys and we will let their public sparring continue,” press secretary Karoline Leavitt told a briefing when asked if the spat would harm the White House’s messaging on tariffs.
“Look, these are obviously two individuals who have very different views on trade and on tariffs.”
Musk recently backed the idea of a free-trade zone between North America and Europe - a wish at odds with Trump’s flagship tariffs.
Tesla makes around half of its vehicles in China, and some of its models use batteries made by China’s BYD.
Tesla shares were down 6.08% late in the Nasdaq session. The stock has now lost 45/74% year-to-date. Musk also faces complications with SpaceX-owned Starlink, whose satellite broadband modems are made in China.
The Tesla and SpaceX CEO also re-posted a famous video of economist Milton Friedman using a seemingly simple pencil to illustrate the complexity of global supply chains.
A number of business executives have spoken out against tariffs over the past 24 hours including Zuru co-founder Nick Mowbray, who posted to LinkedIn:
“China’s exports are higher on paper ($3.5 trillion), but they’re shipping a lot of those goods for U.S. companies. So when we talk about a trade imbalance, it’s often a measurement problem, not a real deficit in value creation.
“Tariff wars miss the point. Global supply chains are deeply intertwined. Penalizing trade doesn’t bring jobs back—it just raises prices and slows innovation.”
‘20 years - not 20 weeks’
Ken Griffin, the billionaire who runs hedge-fund firm Citadel, called the tariffs a “huge policy mistake” at an event on Monday at the University of Miami, according to a report from Bloomberg.
It is wrong to tell a middle-class or economically challenged family “it’s going to cost you 20%, 30%, 40% more for your groceries, for your toaster, for a new vacuum cleaner, for a new car,” Griffin said, according to the report.
“Even if the dream of jobs coming back to America plays out, that’s a 20-year dream. It’s not 20 weeks. It’s not two years. It’s decades.”
The US president has ruled out any pause in his aggressive stance despite retaliatory action from China and signs of criticism from within his normally loyal Republican Party.
But there have also been conflicting messages from within the White House itself.
A long-time China hawk, Navarro has been one of the most hardline voices on tariffs, and targeted Musk in an interview with CNBC.
“When it comes to tariffs and trade, we all understand in the White House, and the American people understand, that Elon’s a car manufacturer. But he’s not a car manufacturer – he’s a car assembler in many cases,” Navarro said.
“If you go to his Texas plant ... the batteries come from Japan and from China, the electronics come from Taiwan.”
The row came a day after Navarro insisted in an opinion piece in the Financial Times that the tariffs were “not a negotiation” – only for Trump to admit later that he was in fact open to some negotiations.
The spat is all the more unusual because of the mesh of loyalties involved.
Trump has strongly defended Musk after a series of vandalism attacks and protests against Tesla over Doge’s cost-cutting drive – even turning the White House into a pop-up showroom for the electric vehicles in a show of support.
Navarro, however, has proven his loyalty to Trump by serving a four-month jail sentence for contempt after refusing to testify to Congress on the January 6, 2021, attack on the US Capitol by Trump supporters.
-Agence France-Presse. With reporting by Herald staff
