Steve Moore, President Trump’s former senior economic adviser, backed tech billionaire Elon Musk’s position in his public spat with White House trade adviser Peter Navarro.
“I’m going to side, on this one, with Elon Musk,” Moore said Tuesday on CNN. “I mean, Elon Musk is right that, you know, tariffs are taxes. They can hurt the economy. We’ve got to have the most productive sector of the economy.”
He also called Musk “the greatest entrepreneur in world history.”
Musk and Navarro have escalated their ongoing debate over the administration’s sweeping tariffs, which have sent shockwaves through the stock market since President Trump announced them last week.
Musk recently advocated for a “zero-tariff situation” between the U.S. and Europe, prompting criticism from Navarro, who claimed Musk “doesn’t understand” during an interview on Fox News’s “Sunday Morning Futures.”
Navarro made clear he believes Musk is “great” when he is “in his DOGE lane,” while also suggesting the tech billionaire is protecting his own business interests.
The feud escalated on Tuesday, when Musk called Navarro a “moron” for claims he made about Tesla’s manufacturing and assembly process.
“Navarro is truly a moron. What he says here is demonstrably false,” Musk wrote on the social platform X, in response to a video of Navarro claiming Tesla is not a “car manufacturer” but rather a “car assembler” that puts together parts from other countries.
Musk pushed back on Navarro’s claims, stating Tesla “has the most American-made cars.”
Tesla produces all of its North American vehicles in the U.S. at factories in California and Texas, though some of its parts do not come from the U.S. While the electric vehicle manufacturer may be somewhat shielded from Trump’s 25 percent auto tariffs due to its domestic production, the company has warned it is still vulnerable to retaliatory tariffs.
Moore, in the CNN interview, compared the infighting among Trump’s advisers to “Abraham Lincoln and his team of rivals,” who clashed over the path forward in the Civil War, and said he think it’s “perfectly fine” that the two advisers are arguing over tariffs in a public matter.
Moore also said he has “some admiration” for Navarro after he went to jail instead of turning on Trump. Navarro served a four-month sentence for refusing to comply with a congressional subpoena related to the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol
“Peter Navarro figuratively took a bullet for Donald Trump,” Moore said. “He went to jail for Donald Trump. And that’s an amazing act of heroism, in my opinion, to do that rather than rat out what, you know, the President said in secret meetings.”
“So I have some admiration for Peter, and I think it’s just perfectly fine that you have this infighting going on, and Trump ultimately will make that decision,” Moore added.
