Donald Trump hands Elon Musk top job in new government efficiency department

The announcement on Tuesday hands even more influence to the world’s richest man (Picture: AFP)

Donald Trump has confirmed Elon Musk will head a new department aimed at creating a more efficient government.

The announcement on Tuesday hands even more influence to the world’s richest man, and fulfils a promise Trump made to the tech billionaire after he endorsed him in the race for the White House and poured nearly £100 million into his campaign.

In a statement, the president-elect said Musk and former Republican presidential candidate Vivek 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 will realize long-held Republican dreams and ‘provide advice and guidance from outside of government’, signaling the Musk and Ramaswamy roles would be informal, without requiring Senate approval and allowing Musk to remain the head of electric car company Tesla, social media platform X and 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 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 millions of dollars to support Trump’s presidential campaign and made public appearances with him.

Donald Trump offers his hand to Elon Musk back stage during a campaign rally at the Butler Farm Show grounds (Picture: Getty)

Musk embraces Trump during a campaign rally at the Butler Farm Show fairgrounds (Picture: Getty)

Adding a government portfolio to Musk’s plate could benefit the market value of his companies and 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 in a research note.

‘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 criticized 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.’

Tesla and SpaceX CEO Elon Musk speaks at a rally for former US President and Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump at Madison Square Garden in New York (Picture: AFP via Getty)

Trump likened the efficiency effort to the Manhattan Project, the US undertaking to build the atomic bomb that helped end World War Two, 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 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 defense 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.

Vivek Ramaswamy waves during a rally for Trump at Madison Square Garden (Picture: Reuters)

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 U.S. 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.

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