Economists have repeatedly warned that a second Trump administration would be a boon to the ultra wealthy and a backslide for everyone else. As the 2024 campaign season enters its final days, the former president’s most prominent billionaire backer is in agreement, and he wants regular Americans to just suck it up.
On Tuesday, Elon Musk — the billionaire owner of X (formerly Twitter) and Tesla — agreed in a social media post that Donald Trump’s return to office would likely crash the economy.
“If Trump succeeds in forcing through mass deportations, combined with Elon hacking away at the government, firing people and reducing the deficit – there will be an initial severe overreaction in the economy,” user @FischerKing64 wrote on X. “Markets will tumble. But when the storm passes and everyone realizes we are on sounder footing, there will be a rapid recovery to a healthier, sustainable economy,” he added.
“Sounds about right,” Musk replied.
The billionaire has been heavily campaigning for Trump in the final weeks of the campaign, including by hosting a potentially illegal cash-for-signatures scheme and million-dollar raffle for registered voters in key swing states. The former president has, in turn, vowed that Musk will be appointed as the head of a “government efficiency commission” under his administration, and be tasked with slashing wasteful spending.
On Friday, Musk explained how he felt such an appointment would play out during a virtual town hall hosted on X.
“We have to reduce spending to live within our means,” Musk said, that will “involve some temporary hardship, but it will ensure long-term prosperity.”
It’s unlikely that the world’s richest man will feel any sort of material economic hardship as he takes scissors to the federal budget. If Musk’s own corporate record cutting costs is anything to go by, the results could be disastrous. Musk’s two-year tenure as the owner of the platform formerly known as Twitter resulted in a drastic shrinking of the company’s workforce, as well as an estimated 80 percent reduction in the company’s value and sharp decline in revenue.
When not railing about immigration, the Trump campaign has made economic wellness a central talking point of its electoral message, promising explosive growth and endless prosperity to prospective voters. Economists say the former president’s actual proposals will do the opposite.
In June, a coalition of Nobel Prize-winning economists warned that Trump will “reignite” inflation and “have a negative impact on the U.S.’s economic standing in the world and a destabilizing effect on the U.S.’s domestic economy.”
Other macroeconomic experts have warned that Trump’s proposal to implement broad-based tariffs on all imported goods would not only raise the prices of common goods for Americans, but send shockwaves throughout global markets.
Musk, who benefits from extensive government subsidies and federal contracts to fund and produce his technological projects, has opposed Vice President Kamala Harris’ proposal to implement more stringent tax burdens on billionaires. Under Trump, Musk would not only be granted a tax boon, but a position in the federal government where his decisions would — by his own admission — steamroll Americans desperate for economic stability.
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