US President-elect Donald Trump has named Elon Musk to a role aimed at creating a more efficient government, handing even more influence to the world’s richest man who donated millions of dollars to helping Trump get elected.
Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy, a former Republican presidential candidate, will co-lead a newly created Department of Government Efficiency, an entity that Trump indicated would operate outside the confines of government.
Trump said in a statement that Musk and Ramaswamy “will pave the way for my Administration to dismantle Government Bureaucracy, slash excess regulations, cut wasteful expenditures, and restructure Federal agencies”.
Trump said the new department would realise long-held Republican dreams and “provide advice and guidance from outside of government,” signalling the Musk and Ramaswamy roles would be informal, without requiring Senate approval and allowing Musk to remain the head of the electric car company Tesla, the social media platform X and the rocket company SpaceX.
The new department would work with the White House and Office of Management & Budget to “drive large-scale structural reform, and create an entrepreneurial approach” to government never seen before, Trump said.
The work would conclude by July 4, 2026 — the 250th anniversary of the signing of the Declaration of Independence.
Musk, ranked by Forbes magazine as the richest person in the world, already stood to benefit from Trump’s victory, with the billionaire entrepreneur expected to wield extraordinary influence to help his companies and secure favourable government treatment.
With many links to Washington, Musk gave nearly $200 million to support Trump’s presidential campaign and made public appearances with him.
Adding a government portfolio to Musk’s plate could benefit the market value of his companies and other favoured businesses such as artificial intelligence and cryptocurrency.
“It’s clear that Musk will have a massive role in the Trump White House with his increasing reach clearly across many federal agencies,” equities analyst Daniel Ives of Wedbush Securities said.
“We believe the major benefits for Musk and Tesla far outweigh any negatives as this continues to be a poker move for the ages by Musk betting on Trump.”
The move was criticised by Public Citizen, a progressive consumer rights NGO that challenged several of Trump’s first-term policies.
“Musk not only knows nothing about government efficiency and regulation, his own businesses have regularly run afoul of the very rules he will be in position to attack in his new ‘czar’ position,” Lisa Gilbert, co-president of Public Citizen, said in a statement.
“This is the ultimate corporate corruption.”
‘Maximum transparency’ promised
Trump likened the efficiency effort to the Manhattan Project, the US undertaking to build the atomic bomb that helped end World War II, while Musk promised transparency.
“All actions of the Department of Government Efficiency will be posted online for maximum transparency,” Musk said on X, inviting the public to provide tips.
“We will also have a leaderboard for most insanely dumb spending of your tax dollars. This will be both extremely tragic and extremely entertaining,” Musk said.
Musk said at a Trump rally at Madison Square Garden in October that the federal budget could be reduced by “at least” $2 trillion. Discretionary spending, including defence spending, is estimated to total $1.9 trillion out of $6.75 trillion in total federal outlays for fiscal 2024, according to the Congressional Budget Office.
“Your money is being wasted and the Department of Government Efficiency is going to fix that. We’re going to get the government off your back and out of your pocketbook,” Musk said at the rally.
The acronym of the new department — DOGE — also references the name of the cryptocurrency dogecoin that Musk promotes.
In August Musk and Tesla won the dismissal of a federal lawsuit accusing them of defrauding investors by hyping dogecoin and conducting insider trading, causing billions of dollars of losses.
Dogecoin has more than doubled since Election Day, tracking a surge in cryptocurrency markets on expectations of a softer regulatory ride under a Trump administration.
Shares in Tesla fell on Wall Street ahead of the announcement but are up about 30% since the election.
Ramaswamy is the founder of a pharmaceutical company who ran for the Republican presidential nomination against Trump and then threw his support behind the former president after dropping out.
In his 2021 bestseller Woke, Inc., Ramaswamy decried decisions by some big companies to base business strategy around social justice and climate change concerns.
Ramaswamy said the appointment means he is withdrawing from consideration for the pending US Senate appointment in Ohio, where Governor Mike DeWine will appoint a replacement for JD Vance, who will become Trump’s vice-president when they are inaugurated on Jan 20.