I was wondering when Elon Musk would go totally rogue. It’s happened. 
Musk Seeks ‘Zero Tariff Situation’ with Europe
The trade war and Musk’s own big mouth are smashing Tesla sales in Europe. He has had enough of “winning” it seems.
Yahoo!Finance reports Musk calls for ‘zero tariff situation’ between US and Europe, slams Trump trade adviser
Elon Musk called for a “zero tariff situation” between the U.S. and Europe on Saturday amid stock market trepidation about President Donald Trump’s massive new tariff regime.
Musk made the comments, which run counter to the sweeping tariffs Trump promised last week to impose on all U.S. trading partners, including European nations, to a group of Italian conservative politicians on Saturday.
“At the end of the day, I hope it’s agreed that both Europe and the United States should move ideally, in my view, to a zero tariff situation, effectively creating a free trade zone between Europe and North America,” the tech billionaire told Matteo Salvini, the leader of Italy’s right-wing League Party.
In response to someone saying Navarro is “correct” in his analysis, Musk replied, “He ain’t built sh*t.”
Navarro Responds
Reuters reports Trump adviser Navarro dismisses Musk as ‘car assembler’ after tariff comments
Peter Navarro, President Donald Trump’s top trade adviser, on Monday dismissed tech-billionaire Elon Musk’s push for “zero tariffs” between the United States and Europe, calling the Tesla CEO a “car assembler” reliant on parts from other countries.
“When it comes to tariffs and trade, we all understand in the White House – and the American people understand – that Elon is a car manufacturer, but he’s not a car manufacturer. He’s a car assembler,” Navarro said, adding that many Tesla parts came from Japan, China and Taiwan.
“He’s a car person. That’s what he does, and he wants the cheap foreign parts.”
“The difference is in our thinking and Elon’s on this is that we want the tires made in Akron. We want the transmissions made in Indianapolis. We want the engines made in Flint and Saginaw, and we want the cars manufactured here,” Navarro said.
Navarro Nonsense
Navarro is clueless. Trump has purposely surrounded himself with economic illiterates.
Navarro never explained what tires made in Akron would cost or what transmissions made in Indianapolis would cost.
Trump won largely on Biden’s inflation. But Trump policies are guaranteed to increase prices.
Michigan’s Economy Will Be the First Big Loser of Tariff Madness
The price of cars and trucks will go up by $8,000 or so. That impacts everyone buying or leasing a car. As of 2022 there were 283 million vehicles registered in the US.
The UAW has about 400,000 members. If UAW jobs increased by 10 percent then there would be 40,000 winners and tens of millions of losers.
And it will take years, if ever, for this production to return. Trump acts like he can snap his fingers and make things happen.
Pain Now and Pain Later
Believe what you want about tariffs, but here is my rebuttal: Michigan’s Economy Will Be the First Big Loser of Tariff Madness
Nearly 20 Percent of Michigan’s economy is directly or indirectly related to autos.
This is not a short-term pain vs long-term gain setup. Rather, it’s pain now and pain later.
Repeat Play in Process
On February 10, 2025 I commented Trump to Impose 25 Percent Tariffs on Steel and Aluminum, Expect Higher Prices
All US consumers of steel and aluminum will pay higher prices, especially the automakers.
The reinstitution of aluminum and steel tariffs across the board is in direct violation of Trump’s loudly bragged USMCA “Best Trade Deal in History”.
Trump has proven ability to repeatedly make the same mistakes, needlessly taunt allies, and violate his own treaties.
No good, and lots of bad will come from this, just as happened before.
Also consider my April 7, 2025 post: An Open Letter to Trump on Tariffs, But He’s not Listening
This letter isn’t from me, but it’s a great read. I found it on X.
The notion that PHD Professors have no experience is totally true. If the Navarro’s of the world were in charge of everything, they would be called “Politicians.”
The Majority of Politicians can be reduced down to simply calling them unproductive beings sucking off of the Government Teat. That Teat is as big as the Ocean, it seems, because most Politicians get elected BROKE and retire multi-Millionaires.
Let’s be honest: the American way is broken.
The tariffs, actual costs, timelines for building/modifying factories, creating materials supply lines and virtually all of the logistical items that allow businesses to plan and be successful have been ignored by the trump administration.
This is simply a power show/grab by trump and his team of economic illiterates. It is costing us allies, friends and credibility. This inane economic war is driving business to our competition and will create shortages of goods and inflation at home.
Farmers in particular (who supported trump) can not plan what to plant because buyers for soybeans, wheat, corn and our other mega crops are vanishing. Brazil, Argentina, Australia and even Russian farmers are direct beneficiaries. Will we have to subsidize our farmers again or let them take the losses?
No one can predict what trump will do next and this destruction of trust is the worst aspect of trumps war on America’s economic stability.
Those side is trump on?
All around my farm and industrial properties Americans are producing things. This projection that we do not produce things at home is absolutely false.
Trade imbalances are not destructive, when another country can produce products that we can not produce (think Coffee or bananas) or cheaper products, we import deflation and export dollars that are used to buy our debt and keep the dollar as the reserve currency of the world.
This created economic advantages well beyond the costs. The problem is a lack of willingness to tax profits appropriately and fairly and control social entitlements.
Trump is s simpleton when it comes to running complex businesses, or a major economy and unfortunately, he is a master at chaos and bankruptcy..
Again, whose side is he on?
Well tariffs are a massive tax on corporate profits. Importers pay them directly. Exporters pay them through lost sales from retaliatory tariffs. The American investor gets kicked in nut sack. But Trump is a simpleton. Still about 2 IQ points above his followers though.
You don’t always have to build factories to create jobs.
Many factories can add shifts or modify their lines to add people and increase production.
The actual costs of tariffs are completely unknown because nobody knows how production will shift or what the adjusted production costs will be.
No, you “create jobs” by putting people on Social Security Disability. Those people count by BLS as ‘fully employed’.
Presto! Once100% of the US population is collecting SSD, the employment problem is solved.
I should go into politics. This economics stuff is too easy.
Don’t shoot the messenger, but modern factories are mostly highly automated. Some are even able to run “dark” with no lighting necessary because there aren’t any humans doing anything in the factory. Additionally, automated factories don’t pay any taxes that human employees would pay, such as SS, Medicare or income.
If Trump wants factories as ‘make work’ places for blue-collar workers, perhaps he should mandate that factory assembly lines must all be staffed by humans standing in line after line?
Along with car assemblers, include all those FDA approved foreign made medicines, drugs, and experimental China virus vaccines made by those transnational big pharma assemblers with the illegal help of Biden pardoned Mr. Fauci while collecting his royalties—no wonder Donnie canceled Fauci’s Secret Service security protection and Chinese hos for secret service agents. Hard times for Senator Fang Bangs and Swallows. .
Well it’s a dream, with Americans working good jobs again.
Let the man dream, who knows?
“Navarro never explained what tires made in Akron would cost or what transmissions made in Indianapolis would cost.”
I am guessing neither did Navarro explain what the hollowing out of the Detroit auto industry cost.
Detroit’s Devil’s Night. “For decades, that night filled many with fear, as neighborhoods with abandoned homes or businesses prepared themselves for possible arson.”
“Peter Navarro,… calling the Tesla CEO a “car assembler”
I sometimes worked with Marco Zappia, who at the time was considered the top sitcom editor in Hollywood. He had edited All in the Family and other Norman Lear shows at CBS. While working where i did, he got an offer he couldn’t refuse, from another post prod. house. I’d heard the owner let him go, saying he wasn’t going to pay that kind of money to a button pusher. Marco wasn’t simply a button pusher.
Would a CT assembled in the USA from 100% domestic parts cost $200,000 or $300,000? Would they allow a trade-in, ever? Asking for a gun toting conservative friend!
Why is Musk complaining to the Italians, when he has access to Trump himself?
Not commenting on tariffs, but I agree 100% that people with Harvard degrees do tend to suffer from the “Ego/Brains > 1” disorder described in the article.
Unfortunately it’s not limited to Harvard, though it tends to concentrate there.
The first clue I got, among what are now many pieces of data, was that the kid from high school who got into Harvard was understood by all fellow students to be a big cheater…
Warren Buffet sold over $300 Billion of Stock because of the Market excesses.
The Tariff Wars were just the straw that that broke the Markets back.
Things will be painful for a while — and Buffet is buying bargain priced stock.
The Tariff Wars will probably reach some settlement over the coming months.
Do you have any evidence that Buffett is already “buying bargain priced stock”?
Or is he still waiting for the bargain prices?
Canada, USA, Mexico and Europe should have zero tariff….
Trump bootlicker count in the comments still > 0
Only if there are no tariffs on all sides Level playing field: sure. They need us more than we need them.
The notion that every part of a car can and should be made here, and that we will have tariffs until that happens, is insane. no sane person can really believe that.
you cannot turn back time like that, because the world changed due to advances in travel, communications, logistics and so on, since the 1940s-1960s. The Panama canal, for example, was pretty important.
Pretending this isn’t the case and that tariffs can force it back is crazy and wont’ work.
what Navarro is saying is literally communism 101, trying to fight the tide of technology and human nature with anti-competitive, protectionist policies.
erecting governmental tariffs across the board as barriers to competition made possible by technological innovation, transport innovation and so on, is communist.
But all the breathless conservatives told us that Biden was the Commie dictator, what’s up with that?
I’d never buy a tire made in Akron, OH, no matter the price. That is, any Goodyear and associated brand tire. They’re utter shyte. The same goes for many things made in the USA
We need more “adults” in the room rather than sparring children.
The 2 dumbest humans on earth muskrat and trump
Trump’s top economist Peter Navarro frequently cites the work of “Ron Vara” in support of increasing tariffs. Turns out Ron Vara is a fictional economist and was entirely made up by him (Ron Vara is an anagram of Navarro). Maniacs are in charge!
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/10/16/us/politics/peter-navarro-ron-vara.html
And on the 3rd day of plummeting it was enough to get ‘someone’ to have the fed speed print them a couple trillion to try to buy the markets back up. Not really surprised, but it will be like pouring it into a black hole.
It is instructive to remember that Peter Navarro is a “fringe” economist—even worse, a fringe economist with zero practical experience in real-world economics. Navarro is delusional and has always been extremely hostile to the reality of free trade in a global economy. In a way, Navarro would be just as much at home in a Trump administration as he would be in a Bernie Sanders administration.
Smart post about Bernie. Trump and Bernie are much more similar than people realize.
Yes, and both have disastrous economic policies. Bernie’s policies would be a little more subtle, but in the long run, both Bernie and Trump are equally very misguided.
Yes, Bernie is a protectionist. If he were to become President, he would embark on a protectionist agenda that is blatantly anti-free trade. He would likely do it less chaotically than Trump, but at the end of the day, the populist ideals would drive his actions.
Trump might impose 50% additional tariff on China by Wed if they don’t remove their 34% tariffs by tomorrow ==> [Covid]^2 or Xi capitulation??
If I were Xi, I would say we have decided to stop selling our products to the USA until these foolish tariffs are removed. All shipments to the USA are ordered to turn back. We await President Trump’s apology.
Were this to occur, millions of businesses in the USA would have to shut down with days, immediately throwing the USA into a recession and possibly a real depression.
Trump’s Love for Tariffs Began in Japan’s ’80s BoomTrump’s Love for Tariffs Began in Japan’s ’80s Boom – The New York Times (archive.ph)
Trump has made it very clear from the beginning, he wants jobs and manufacturing here Not in EU w zero tariffs.
And yet, he never tells you what that is going to cost. Funny.
Isn’t the EU more comparable to the USA? Manufacturing in China is cheaper due to lower wages and less environmental regulations, etc. In the EU the wages and regulations are similar.
A search of 2018 on Mish shows 341 posts about tariffs. Did you ever do a mea culpa for claiming it would ruin things back then and never did? To the point that the tariffs were actually held over by an administration that hated Trump. Now you wish to jump the gun again after getting it wrong back then. You have no idea what the results of trade negotiations will be. None. Maybe it will be Armageddon. But after getting it so wrong then, you think you’d err on the side of waiting to see. The markets and economy went down for 18 straight months under Reagan. How is he remembered? Short term pain seems baked in. The idea you can predict the long term with someone as unpredictable as Trump is just plain arrogant.
I get your point, but those tariffs from Trump 1.0 were more targeted and focused. These tariffs in Trump 2.0 are not targeted and lack focus.
If Trump wanted to go this route, I’d prefer he roll them out with clarity (the on and off again tariffs to our neighbors) and towards specific things in response to specific tariffs/trade barrier policies.
Bravo. Not to mention, it’s the non-monetary portion (artificial “standards” and other made up hoops to jump through) that is just as important and needs to be addressed. But you won’t find that analysis here…just more TDS.
That said — once this 3-day (lol) bear market is forgotten it’ll back to copy pasta and complaining about some other Trump policy.
VAT is another one people gloss over. Take Israel for example, lot’s of consternation about the 17% tariff on Israel….all you’ll see in the VERY curated headlines on the major search engines is how Israel dropped their remaining tariffs on US goods to zero — so why would the US still keep the 17% tariff on them? Well, of course no mention of Israels 17% VAT…just a tariff in sheeps clothing.
How exactly is a VAT a tariff in sheep clothing when the VAT applies to all products, whether imported or domestically manufactured? A VAT tax is essentially a national sales tax. Thus, it is not protectionist in any way.
When you elect PT Barnum, expect a circus.
Agreed. The circus was fun AND scary from 2020 to 2024
And somehow, you think this is an improvement?
What is it MAGA eats that makes them see what doesn’t exist?
Well said!