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HOW MUSK OUT-MANEUVERED TRUMP  
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Robert Kuttner
December 21, 2024
The American Prospect
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_ Musk got the only thing that he wanted. Does Trump realize it? _

Elon Musk, Donald Trump, and JD Vance at last week's Army-Navy
football game., AP Photo/Stephanie Scarbrough

 

Elon Musk blew up a near-complete bipartisan budget deal with an
avalanche of tweets contending that it was too costly, luring Donald
Trump into demanding that Republicans kill it. But Musk’s real
reason—a story that David Dayen broke in the _Prospect_
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that the agreement included painstakingly negotiated limits on
American tech investment in China.  Had that provision passed, it
would have been costly to Musk’s extensive Chinese Tesla operations
and future AI plans.

Between Tuesday and Thursday, the budget deal collapsed. Trump,
following Musk’s lead, threw in a new demand that the deal tackle
the debt ceiling, always a politically tricky vote. But neither
Democrats nor Republican fiscal hawks would give Trump that.

In the end, legislators of both parties wanted to get home for
Christmas, and both houses overwhelmingly passed a simple
“continuing resolution” keeping the government funded at roughly
present levels through March, plus disaster relief and farm aid. Musk
succeeded in stripping out the China provision.

_MORE FROM ROBERT KUTTNER_
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Collateral damage included the loss of a bipartisan measure
constraining abuses by pharmacy benefit managers, another limiting
hotel and ticketing junk fees, and about 100 other bipartisan
agreements. (Late night, the Senate did manage to pass two bills that
were jettisoned from the deal but had already passed the House: one of
several provisions funding pediatric cancer research, and another
transferring ownership of the derelict RFK Stadium to Washington,
D.C.)

The mainstream media focused on the tick-tock of whether the
government would shut down, on Musk’s surprising influence, and the
issue of the debt ceiling—but totally missed the China investment
provision that was the real driver of the dispute. Now some of the
more exemplary scribes, from Heather Cox Richardson
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Dionne
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are picking it up.

Did Trump miss it? Let’s recall that Trump is a ferocious China
hawk. Stopping U.S. investment in sensitive technologies that could
help China has been a key element of the agenda for serious China
experts in both parties. On that issue, Musk won and Trump was rolled.

Trump’s own goal in the budget deal, as noted, was the debt ceiling.
The failure to get that will come back to haunt him when the
nation’s borrowing limit expires next summer. House Republicans
privately discussed a deal in a future reconciliation bill to exchange
a $1.5 trillion debt ceiling increase for $2.5 trillion in mandatory
spending cuts—think Medicare, Medicaid, food stamps, and veterans
benefits. (By law, Social Security cannot be altered in
reconciliation.) That will prove politically toxic, even to
Republicans.

So Democrats will probably have some future leverage on the debt
ceiling. House leader Hakeem Jeffries is already talking
about forcing it to be permanently abolished
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a good idea that would end future MAGA hostage-taking.

In contrast to Trump, Musk played his hand in a way that made sure
that he won his objective, and didn’t mind sacrificing Trump’s. In
blessing the revised deal, which passed the House late Friday, 366-34,
and the Senate, 85-11, Musk disingenuously praised Congress for
drastically shrinking the total spending. This was total bullshit,
since the budget numbers of the original deal and final one were
almost identical. But shrinking spending wasn’t the goal: keeping
the government out of his China business was.

In short, Musk outplayed Trump. Musk is not the sort of guy you can
take to the woodshed. And the Inaugural is still a month away.

There will be more conflicts between the goals of President Musk and
those of President Trump. Some of the slash-and-burn budget cutting
that Musk is proposing—Social Security, Medicare, economic
development and small business aid—will enrage Republican
legislators and governors, and threaten base Republican constituents,
not to mention the deep differences over unfolding China policy.

Who will outplay whom then?

_Robert Kuttner is co-founder and co-editor of The American Prospect,
and professor at Brandeis University’s Heller School._

_Used with the permission © The American Prospect, Prospect.org
[[link removed]], 2024. All rights reserved. _

_Read the original article at
Prospect.org: [link removed]-…
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brand of independent impact journalism_

* Elon Musk
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* Donald Trump
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* Congress
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* Politics
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* China
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* Federal Budget
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* Federal debt limit
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