Musk thinks Trump's pal Navarro is a ‘moron'. Who are we supposed to root for here?

The Guardian

11-04-2025

I would like to dispel some rumors right up front. One, I did not receive a PhD in business from Harvard Business School. Hopefully this doesn't make you think less of me, but I felt it necessary to be honest. Second, I did not even attend Harvard. I thought about it once; hopefully, thinking about something isn't illegal yet.
My point is that I am no elitist snob begging for your subservience. I'm a simple man, just trying to salvage the last of my meager wealth during the great trade war of 2025. I know absolutely nothing about global economic policy. As such, I must be worth listening to.
I say all of this because Elon Musk, the owner of various companies like Tesla, SpaceX, Weyland-Yutani, OCP, the Tyrell Corporation, etc, has made it abundantly clear that he can't stand Peter Navarro.
Peter Navarro, with his fancy degree from Harvard, is too much of an intellectual for the current zeitgeist that favors a complete lack of knowledge for just about anyone in a position of authority. The secretary of education never taught a single school class, but she has (poorly) received a Stone Cold Stunner. The secretary of Health and Human Services has a problem with pasteurized milk. The secretary of transportation was on Road Rules, so at least he has a basic understanding of motorway etiquette. But for the most part, if you have only a layman's understanding of your role, you are unequivocally qualified to lead.
I am ill-suited to any cabinet position, unless there's a secretary of cocktails, in which case, I make a mean dry gin martini with a twist of lemon. So I am paradoxically the perfect person to run our economic policy, based on the rhetoric of Elon Musk, who deemed Peter Navarro to be a 'moron' because of his advanced degree, and his support for Donald Trump's ruinous tariffs against global trade. Navarro stated that Musk's Tesla plants are a prime example of the world's trade imbalance. 'In many cases, if you go to [Musk's] Texas plant, a good part of the engines that he gets, which in the EV case are the batteries, come from Japan and come from China. The electronics come from Taiwan,' Navarro alleged.
This statement set Musk off, causing him to turn on Navarro – whom he considers 'dumber than a sack of bricks' – and by proxy, Trump's stated aims of bringing manufacturing back to the States through onerous taxation. Musk said on X: 'By any definition whatsoever, Tesla is the most vertically integrated auto manufacturer in America with the highest percentage of US content. Navarro should ask the fake expert he invented, Ron Vara.' The 'Ron Vara' comment is in reference to the allegedly made-up expert that Navarro cited in his 2011 book Death By China, which warns the reader of nefarious Chinese economic policy. When called out about his charming little fib, Navarro said that the use of a fictional figure that is clearly an anagram of his own last name was a fun 'inside joke' between him and … I suppose the basic tenets of ethics.
This is, by any cogent estimation, a battle of the titans: Navarro, the Ivy League-educated garbage man for the current American president, and Musk, who managed to wield his immense wealth to convince said president that having a functioning government was beta-ass behavior, bruh. Is there a winner here? Probably not. We all lose when no one seems to care about anything but their own interests. Navarro is terrified to upset his boss. Musk clearly doesn't want to endanger his own profits by allowing tariffs to squelch the free exchange of goods between nations that like electric cars. The rest of us, the chaff caught between these two gibbering hobbits, can fend for ourselves until they figure it out.
This fight is expensive for us. The stock market, which is too esoteric and costly for most average people to participate in directly, shed trillions of dollars thanks to fears of Trump's tariffs. That value bounced back after the president backed off his threats for a period of 90 days, but the psychological effect of that brinkmanship will be hard to shake. Those fluctuations are video game-like blips for the mega-rich, but they can cause real harm to the retirement funds of the average citizen. A tariff on pharmaceuticals could inhibit people from accessing life-saving medication. To people like Navarro and Musk, these are theoretical concerns, so far removed from their everyday lives that they might as well be the problems of the Klingon Empire on Star Trek. Why should they care, when their own petty squabbles are so near and dear to them?
But this is the grand thesis of Trump's America. Personal grievance and retribution are paramount. Proving you are superior to your enemy means more than the fate of a stranger, or a neighbor. Why do we get out of bed every morning if not to smite our opponent on the virtual battlefield of social media? It means more to be right than to do right.
In some twisted way, Musk is correct. We do need some manner of global trade to survive, because the global economy is so bloody complicated and ridiculous that we have to keep some semblance of the status quo for now. That his calculus is related to his own personal wealth is an unfortunate aspect of this position. Navarro, on the other hand, understands Musk shouldn't be involved in the economic policy of the entire planet. The White House press secretary, Karoline Leavitt, referred to this spat as a benign 'boys will be boys' dust-up, but I think it's more than that. This is Godzilla v Kong, if Godzilla was a sycophantic bureaucrat and Kong appeared to have very expensive hair transplants.
In the aforementioned film, Godzilla and Kong beat the shit out of each other and destroyed an entire city in the process. This real-life fight could actually be more devastating if we do nothing about it.
Dave Schilling is a Los Angeles-based writer and humorist