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A lot of people are very unhappy with Donald Trump and his tariffs. Counted among those people is Elon Musk’s wealthy brother Kimbal Musk, who lashed out on Monday with a very public attack on the President.
“Who would have thought that Trump was actually the most high tax American President in generations?” Kimbal Musk, a Tesla director and former board member for SpaceX and Chipotle, wrote on X (Twitter).
“Through his tariff strategy, Trump has implemented a structural, permanent tax on the American consumer.
“Even if he is successful in bringing jobs on shore through the tariff tax, prices will remain high and the tax on consumption will remain the form of higher prices because we are simply not as good at making all things,” Kimbal Musk continued.
“A tax on consumption also means less consumption. Which means less jobs. Which in turn leads to less consumption. And then even less jobs.
“America has incredible strengths. We should play to those strengths, and not be forced to play to our weaknesses. Same with the rest of the world.”
Kimbal Musk, who has an estimated net worth of around $700 million, joins Barstool Sports’ Dave Portnoy, hedge fund manager Bill Ackman, and other wealthy folks in questioning President Trump’s tariff plan.
Even Elon Musk, Trump’s pal, appears to be getting edgy after losing around $30 billion due to the tariffs. Musk and Trump trade adviser Peter Navarro have been very publicly feuding over them – something about which White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt cavalierly remarked on Tuesday, “Boys will be boys!”
Ackman, once a staunch Trump supporter, wrote on X over the weekend, “The president is losing the confidence of business leaders around the globe. The consequences for our country and the millions of our citizens who have supported the President — in particular low-income consumers who are already under a huge amount of economic stress — are going to be severely negative. This is not what we voted for.”
Interestingly, University of Chicago Economics Professor Brent Neiman, whose research Donald Trump reportedly used as the basis to increase tariffs, wrote in the New York Times this week, “The Office of the U.S. Trade Representative released its methodology and cited an academic paper produced by four economists, including me, seemingly in support of their numbers. But they got it wrong. Very wrong.”