Donald Trump’s return to the White Home may additionally show to be a win for certainly one of his most seen supporters: Elon Musk.
The world’s richest man spent election night time in Florida with Trump at his Mar-a-Lago resort as returns got here in.
“The folks of America gave @realDonaldTrump a crystal clear mandate for change tonight,” Mr Musk wrote on the social media platform X as Trump’s victory started to appear all however sure.
And at his victory speech on the Palm Seaside Conference Middle, Trump spent a number of minutes praising Mr Musk and recounting the profitable touchdown of a rocket manufactured by certainly one of Mr Musk’s firms, SpaceX.
Mr Musk threw his assist behind the Republican virtually instantly after the assassination try on Trump in Butler, Pennsylvania in July.
As one of many president-elect’s most necessary backers, the tech billionaire donated greater than $119m (£92m) to fund a Tremendous PAC geared toward re-electing Trump.
He additionally spent the final weeks earlier than election day operating a get-out-the-vote effort within the battleground states, which included a every day giveaway of $1m to voters in these states. The giveaway grew to become the topic of a authorized problem, although a choose later dominated they might go forward.
After throwing his identify, cash, and platform behind Trump, Mr Musk has loads to achieve from Trump’s re-election.
The president-elect has mentioned that in a second time period, he would invite Mr Musk into his administration to eradicate authorities waste.
Mr Musk has referred to the potential effort because the “Division of Authorities Effectivity,” or DOGE, the identify of a meme and cryptocurrency that he has popularised.
The businessman might additionally profit from Trump’s presidency via his possession of SpaceX, which already dominates the enterprise of sending authorities satellites to house.
With a detailed ally within the White Home, Mr Musk might search to additional capitalise on these authorities ties.
Mr Musk has criticised rivals together with Boeing for the construction of their authorities contracts, which he says disincentive ending tasks on funds and on time.
SpaceX has additionally moved into constructing spy satellites simply because the Pentagon and American spy businesses seem poised to take a position billions of {dollars} into them.
Mr Musk’s electrical car maker Tesla might in the meantime reap good points from an administration that Trump has mentioned can be outlined by “the bottom regulatory burden.”
Simply final month, the US company in control of regulating highway security revealed it was probing Tesla’s self-driving software program programs.
Mr Musk has additionally come beneath fireplace for allegedly looking for to dam Tesla employees from unionising. The United Auto Employees filed unfair labour follow costs in opposition to each Trump and Musk after the 2 talked about Musk supposedly firing placing employees throughout a dialog on X.
Trump has additionally pledged to decrease taxes on firms and the rich.
That’s one other promise Mr Musk is probably going hoping he’ll hold.
