‘Dumber than a sack of bricks’: Musk unloads on Trump’s top trade adviser
Washington: Divisions over tariffs have boiled over in Donald Trump’s inner circle with billionaire Tesla chief Elon Musk launching a vicious attack on the US president’s “dangerously dumb” top trade adviser Peter Navarro.
The spat – which has been brewing for days as Musk urged Trump against his plan for tariffs on dozens of US trading partners – exploded on Tuesday (Wednesday AEST) with the world’s richest man directing a barrage of abuse towards the architect of Trump’s tariff agenda.
Elon Musk, Donald Trump and Peter Navarro. Differences of opinion on trade tariffs have led to vicious online abuse from Musk.
In a series of TV appearances, Navarro argued Musk’s opposition to tariffs was driven by self-interest because Tesla imported cheap parts from overseas, describing the electric vehicle company as an assembly plant, not a manufacturer.
“Navarro is truly a moron. What he says here is demonstrably false,” Musk posted on X, referring to one of the trade adviser’s television interviews.
In separate posts, Musk also called Navarro “dumber than a sack of bricks” and referred to him multiple times as “Retarrdo”.
Musk appeared to have deleted the tweets later, but then added: “I’d like to apologize to bricks for calling Peter Retarrdo dumber than a sack of bricks. That was so unfair to bricks.”
He also wrote: “Independent experts agree that he is Retarrded.”
White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt sought to dismiss the internecine attacks as a harmless fracas.
“These are obviously two individuals who have very different views on trade and tariffs,” she said. “Boys will be boys. We will let their public sparring continue.”
Navarro is the most pro-tariff adviser in Trump’s economic circle and played a central role in the tariffs announced last week.
He prevailed against arguments that close allies such as Australia and the United Kingdom should be exempted.
Broader divisions have also become clearer amid a share market rout.
US Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent reportedly flew to Florida on the weekend, where Trump was playing golf, to urge the president to form an “endgame” on the tariffs and pursue negotiation with other countries, rather than retribution.
Leavitt said Trump has now met his trade team and directed them to reach bilateral deals with any nation that asks to negotiate, as long as the deals benefited American workers and helped reduce the US trade deficit.
Trump was yet to publicly weigh in on the escalating stoush between two of his top aides.
Early this week, when Musk lashed out at Navarro over the tariffs, the latter hit back telling him to stay in his “lane”.
During Trump’s first term, Navarro was well-known to Australian politicians and trade negotiators as the hard-line adviser who opposed giving Australia an exemption on steel and aluminium tariffs.
He later argued that Australia exploited the exemption granted by Trump in order to “flood” the American market, even though steel and aluminium from Australia accounted for less than 2 per cent of US imports of those products.
At a 2019 meeting in Japan between Trump, then-prime minister Scott Morrison and a large team of advisers, Navarro was “unnecessarily sharp” in prosecuting the case that Australia was in breach of an agreement to limit aluminium shipments, according to a person in the room.
Navarro went to jail last year because he didn’t comply with a subpoena relating to the pro-Trump riots of January 6, 2021 in Washington.
He also made up a fictional character, Ron Vara – an anagram of his last name – whom he quotes in several books as a source of economic wisdom.
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