US President-elect Donald Trump on Tuesday announced the selection of the world's richest men, Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy, to lead the Department of Government Efficiency in a plan to cut the federal government's bureaucracy by about a third. did.
Mr. Musk has pushed for the creation of a government efficiency division, something he has pushed relentlessly ever since, emphasizing the agency's acronym, Doge. into a meme A Shiba Inu with a rich expression. President Trump said the agency would “conduct a complete financial and performance audit of the entire federal government and make recommendations for fundamental reform.”
in Video posted on X Two days after the election, President Trump said, “I am immediately reissuing my 2020 Executive Order, restoring the President's authority to remove corrupt officials.'' He wants to “wipe out the deep state.” His promise is the same as his slogan on The Apprentice: “You're fired!” And Project 2025, the influential and controversial blueprint for President Trump's second term, shows how bureaucrats can be fired.
Mr. Musk has extensive experience cutting corporate spending, and he has promised to cut federal payroll costs in a similar way. He said that after acquiring Company X (formerly Twitter) in 2022, the company has reduced its workforce by 80%. Prevented a $3 billion shortfallbut was otherwise unrewarded. Revenue has decreased significantly And with advertisers fleeing, a comeback seems unlikely. But as CEO of SpaceX, he has earned a reputation for launching rockets cheaper than competitors by negotiating with suppliers and maintaining a lean operation.
The billionaire appeared to have no illusions about what would happen after the proposed spending cuts, admitting that spending cuts “inevitably involve temporary difficulties.” Americans want to spend less of their money. Do they want austerity and cuts in federal funding? Do they want to be advised by the world's richest man to cut back on spending?
Ramaswamy, on the other hand, is a wealthy biotech entrepreneur who first ran for the Republican nomination last year. He told ABC earlier this week that he was having “high-impact discussions” about his role in the Trump administration. Although he has no government experience, he has been a driving force in cutting costs in the corporate sector. After acquiring a stake in the struggling online media company BuzzFeed, he asked the company in May to cut jobs and hire conservative commentators like Tucker Carlson.
Mr. Musk has already asked Mr. Trump to appoint SpaceX employees to key government positions. The New York Times reported. The president-elect has promised to ban bureaucrats from taking jobs at regulated companies. Such a rule would keep SpaceX's lieutenants out of the Pentagon's doors. But Trump never shied away from nepotism. Neither party is trying to avoid the appearance of a conflict of interest. Mr. Musk's role in government will be structured to allow him to maintain control of his companies. Financial Times coverage.
During his first term, President Trump and his team struggled to fill the thousands of government appointments needed to run the federal government. Former New Jersey Governor Chris Christie's administration said: never fully recovered Because they couldn't find anyone to appoint them. Perhaps adding Mr. Musk to the equation is intended to prevent a repeat of this kind of back-and-forth action.
In an extreme version of the new administration, Trump and Musk would simply eliminate positions for which they cannot find friendly appointees. In John Kennedy Toole's Pulitzer Prize-winning 1980 novel, The Union of Dunces, a foolish protagonist is tasked with sorting through an unwieldy pile of files at his new job, and attempts to clean up the company's mess. I will. However, Ignatius J. Reilly was no organizing genius. He's just throwing out a cabinet full of records. It's easy to imagine Trump and Musk following his example.
However, what stands in Musk's way is labor law, one of his mortal enemies. Tesla is the only major U.S. automaker whose workers are not unionized. billionaire ceo I want to leave it as is.. By contrast, federal employees enjoy strong job protections, which would impede and perhaps preclude Musk's slash-and-burn approach to cutting costs.
Although Musk has run a variety of companies, he has little experience managing public sector employees. He may find them less flexible than the Lions they are used to.
Kira Lerner contributed to this report
