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      Elon Musk and DOGE vs. Regulators

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      The billionaire has needled government agencies, armed with potential influence over their budgets. But some of these organizations are also looking into his interests.Elon Musk’s attacks on the agencies that regulate his businesses are raising questions about conflicts of interest.Eric Lee/The New York TimesMusk vs. regulatorsElon Musk remains perhaps the most consequential figure in President-elect Donald Trump’s orbit, with a commission for cutting government spending headed by him and Vivek Ramaswamy — widely known by its acronym, DOGE — promising huge reductions.Federal regulators have become prominent targets for Musk and his allies. But those agencies are continuing to scrutinize the tech billionaire’s interests, raising questions about conflicts.“The SEC is just another weaponized institution doing political dirty work,” Musk posted on X on Thursday, joining a flurry of right-wing attacks on the agency. The impetus for the ire: an appeals court ruling that Nasdaq can’t require diversity on the boards of companies that list on the exchange, a longtime bugbear of conservatives.Ramaswamy wrote on X of the commission: “When an agency like the SEC is so repeatedly & thoroughly embarrassed in federal court for flouting the law, it loses its legitimacy as a law enforcement body.”That comes after Musk took aim at the I.R.S. last month, when he polled his X followers about what to do with the tax authority’s budget. The overwhelming response: “Deleted.”But the S.E.C. is renewing scrutiny of Musk. He disclosed on X that the regulator had given him an offer to settle an inquiry into unspecified charges. A letter from Alex Spiro of Quinn Emanuel Urquhart & Sullivan, Musk’s lawyer, claimed that the agency had given them 48 hours to accept or face punishment, as part of an “improperly motivated campaign.” Spiro’s letter also revealed that the commission had reopened an investigation this week into Neuralink, Musk’s brain-implant start-up.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Canada’s Plan To Avoid Trump’s Tariffs Takes Shape

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      Two weeks after a Mar-a-Lago dinner with Donald J. Trump, details of Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s plan to stave off a showdown with the United States are emerging.Canada is working on a broad plan, including drones and police dogs, to address concerns raised by President-elect Donald J. Trump about the shared border between the two nations, underscoring the urgency of avoiding threatened tariffs that would send its economy into meltdown. Mr. Trump has made it clear that he expects America’s neighbors to keep undocumented migrants and drugs from entering the United States. In a closely watched meeting between Prime Minister Justin Trudeau of Canada and the leaders of the country’s provinces on Wednesday, Mr. Trudeau and senior members of his government said that they would come up with measures to fortify the border. The Canadian government will flesh out details, figure out a price tag, establish a timeline and then present the plan to the incoming Trump administration before Mr. Trump’s inauguration next month, according to two officials with knowledge of the discussions, who asked not to be identified describing internal deliberations. Details of the costs of these measures will be shared on Monday, when the country’s finance minister announces an interim budget, the officials said. The measures under consideration include better controlling border crossings by deploying drones and canine units and reducing unnecessary foot traffic between the two countries, according to the two officials, who listened in on the virtual government meeting.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      JD Vance, Elon Musk and the Future of America

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      Beneath all the furor around Donald Trump’s appointments — Matt Gaetz down and out, Pete Hegseth down but maybe coming back, the Kash Patel drama waiting the wings — the most important figures in this administration’s orbit have not changed since Election Day: Besides the president himself, the future of Trumpism is still most likely to be shaped and stamped by two men, JD Vance and Elon Musk.Not just because of their talent and achievements, and not just because Vance is the political heir apparent and Musk would be one of the world’s most influential men even if he didn’t have the ear of the president-elect. It’s also because they represent, more clearly than any other appointee, two potent visions for a 21st century right, and their interaction is likely to shape conservatism for the next four years and beyond.Musk is the dynamist, the believer in growth and innovation and exploration as the lodestars of American civilization. His dynamism was not always especially ideological: The Tesla and SpaceX mogul was once a Barack Obama Democrat, happy to support an active and sometimes spendthrift government so long as it spent freely on his projects. But as Musk has moved right, he has adopted a more libertarian pose, insisting on the profound wastefulness of government spending and the tyranny of the administrative state.Vance meanwhile is the populist, committed to protect and uplift those parts of America neglected or left behind in an age of globalization. Along with his support for the Trumpian causes of tariffs and immigration restriction, this worldview has made him more sympathetic than the average Republican senator to certain forms of government investment — from longstanding programs like Social Security to new ideas about industrial policy and family policy.Despite this contrast, the Musk and Vance worldviews overlap in important ways. Musk has moved in a populist direction on immigration, while Vance has been a venture capitalist and clearly has a strong sympathy for parts of the dynamist worldview, especially its critique of the regulatory state. Both men share a farsighted interest in the collapsing birthrate, a heretofore-fringe issue that’s likely to dominate the later parts of the 21st century. And there is modest-but-real convergence between the Muskian “tech” worldview and Vance’s more “neo-trad” style of religious conservatism, based on not just a shared antipathy toward wokeness but also similar views about the intelligibility of the cosmos and the providential place of humankind in history.So you can imagine a scenario, in Trump’s second term and beyond, where these convergences yield a dynamist-populist fusionism — a conservatism that manages to simultaneously aim for the stars and uplift and protect the working class, in which economic growth and technological progress help renew the heartland (as Musk’s own companies have brought jobs and optimism to South Texas) while also preserving our creaking social compact.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Elon Musk and the Tech Billionaires Steering Trump’s Transition Team

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      The involvement of wealthy investors has made this presidential transition one of the most potentially conflict-ridden in modern history.The week after the November election, President-elect Donald J. Trump gathered his top advisers in the tearoom at his Florida resort, Mar-a-Lago, to plan the transition to his second-term government.Mr. Trump had brought two of his most valued houseguests to the meeting: the billionaire Tesla boss Elon Musk and the billionaire co-founder of Oracle, Larry Ellison. The president-elect looked around the conference table and issued a joking-not-joking challenge.“I brought the two richest people in the world today,” Mr. Trump told his advisers, according to a person who was in the room. “What did you bring?”Mr. Trump has delighted in a critical addition to his transition team: the Silicon Valley billionaires and millionaires who have been all over the transition, shaping hiring decisions and even conducting interviews for senior-level jobs. Many of those who are not formally involved, like Mr. Ellison, have been happy to sit in on the meetings.Their involvement, to a degree far deeper than previously reported, has made this one of the most potentially conflict-ridden presidential transitions in modern history. It also carries what could be vast implications for the Trump administration’s policies on issues including taxes and the regulation of artificial intelligence, not to mention clashing mightily with the notion that Mr. Trump’s brand of populism is all about helping the working man.The presence of the Silicon Valley crew during critical moments also reflects something larger. Silicon Valley was once seen as a Democratic stronghold, but the new generation of tech leaders — epitomized by Mr. Musk — often has a right-wing ideology and a sense that they have an opportunity now to shift the balance of power in favor of less-fettered entrepreneurship.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Trump Names David Sacks to Oversee Crypto and A.I.

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      President-elect Donald J. Trump has named one of Silicon Valley’s most prominent conservative investors, donors and media personalities to help oversee American tech policy.David Sacks, a venture capitalist and an early executive at PayPal who launched a hit podcast, will be the “White House A.I. and Crypto Czar,” the president-elect announced in a social media post on Thursday. Mr. Sacks is a close friend of Elon Musk, and Mr. Sacks has been among the people over the last year or so encouraging Mr. Musk to delve deeper into Republican politics.The position will be new, and further cements the expectation that the Trump White House intends to take a lighter hand with the regulation of technology and in particular cryptocurrencies, which have surged in value since Mr. Trump won the election and in which Mr. Trump personally has a business interest. Mr. Sacks, who leads a venture capital firm called Craft Ventures, has in general called for a more permissive policy on both cryptocurrency and artificial intelligence.Mr. Sacks won a battle within the Trump transition effort. Some people were pitching Mr. Trump’s team on separate positions where different people would oversee artificial intelligence and crypto, according to a person close to the process. But Mr. Sacks was chosen to oversee them all together in a joint appointment.“David will guide policy for the Administration in Artificial Intelligence and Cryptocurrency, two areas critical to the future of American competitiveness,” Mr. Trump said on Thursday evening. “David will focus on making America the clear global leader in both areas.”It is not clear if his role will be full time; Mr. Sacks has previously told friends that he did not want a formal role because it would require him to leave his position overseeing his venture capital fund, The New York Times has previously reported. Mr. Sacks announced a new start-up funding round led by his firm just this week.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Musk, Trump, A.I. and Other DealBook Summit Highlights

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      The economy, inflation, tariffs, the future of media, pardon politics and other big topics that made headlines this year.Jeff Bezos was cautiously optimistic that President-elect Donald Trump would be more measured in his second term.Michael M. Santiago/Getty ImagesFour takeaways from the DealBook Summit The U.S. election dominated the news agenda this year, and the two people at the center of Donald Trump’s win came up in nearly every conversation yesterday at the DealBook Summit. The president-elect and Elon Musk may not have been in the room, but questions about how they will shape business and politics were front and center.The general view of the day was cautious optimism, even among those who had publicly criticized Trump and Musk — or been targeted by them.But many questions remain. What will Trump and Musk mean for government, business and the economy? Will they succeed in cutting regulation and government spending? And will they go after their perceived enemies and rivals?Here are four big themes from this year’s event.What will happen with the economy?Most of the speakers were willing to give Trump the benefit of the doubt, or at least played down worries about his most disruptive policy ideas.Jay Powell, the Fed chair, addressed one of the biggest questions hanging over the next administration: Will the president-elect go after the central bank’s independence? No, Powell said emphatically. The Fed, he said, was created by Congress and its autonomy is “the law of the land.”“There is very, very broad support for that set of ideas in Congress in both political parties, on both sides of the Hill, and that’s what really matters,” he said.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      The Biggest Takeaways From the DealBook Summit With Jeff Bezos, Sam Altman and More

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      Serena Williams, Jerome H. Powell, Jeff Bezos and other leaders across business and technology discussed artificial intelligence, inflation, the media and what the world would look like under a second Donald J. Trump presidency.Mr. Bezos, for one, thinks the president-elect has “a good chance of succeeding.”Elon Musk wasn’t in the room, but he was present throughout at the DealBook Summit. The speakers were largely optimistic about his efforts in the new administration.The event, hosted by Andrew Ross Sorkin, founder of DealBook, has taken place since 2011.Here are five main themes:Inflation is still an issue, but there’s a chance for growth.Jerome H. Powell, the chair of the Federal Reserve, said the economy was in a “very good place.” Inflation has come down, and the labor market has rebounded. The big takeaway for investors: The central bank can afford to be more cautious when it considers lowering interest rates, Mr. Powell said. (The next Fed meeting will be Dec. 17-18.)Ken Griffin, the billionaire founder of the hedge fund Citadel and a top donor to the Republican Party, placed the blame for inflation squarely on the Biden administration, which, he argued, “put this country on an inflationary path that was unprecedented in our lifetime.” Mr. Powell has “had to deal with cleaning up the mess,” he added.Former President Bill Clinton said inflation was the “fundamental problem” that helped Mr. Trump return to the White House.“The average person had not really lived through something like this for 40 years, since the ’70s,” Mr. Clinton said.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      2023 DealBook Summit Concluded With an Elon Musk Discussion

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      In a wide-ranging interview last year with Andrew Ross Sorkin of The New York Times, Elon Musk opened up about his demons, passions, what drives him and what bugs him.Amir Hamja/The New York TimesThe 2023 DealBook Summit concluded with an interview of Elon Musk that caught even Andrew Ross Sorkin off guard. In a 90-minute conversation, the divisive billionaire didn’t hold back.Mr. Musk accused advertisers that had pulled their money from X, following his endorsement of an antisemitic conspiracy theory, of trying to “blackmail” him. He used an expletive multiple times to emphasize his point. Mr. Musk also shared his concerns about the rapid-fire development of artificial intelligence and OpenAI, the chatbot maker he had co-founded and later left over philosophical differences. That feud has since grown into one of the tech world’s most closely watched lawsuits.Mr. Musk opened up about his demons, his passions, what drives him and what bugs him. He said he wouldn’t vote to re-elect President Biden, but he also expressed misgivings about Donald J. Trump.The world knows what happened next: He became Mr. Trump’s biggest supporter, helping and bankrolling him to victory last month in the race for the White House.Since 2012, the DealBook Summit has brought together the biggest newsmakers in business, policy and culture to speak candidly about the global economy and the forces shaping it. Prominent interviewees have included the Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates, the former Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton and the entrepreneur and social media influencer Kim Kardashian.The one-day conference has also featured interviews with Sam Bankman-Fried, the fallen crypto executive convicted of masterminding one of the biggest business frauds of recent times, as well as Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen and BlackRock’s chief executive, Larry Fink. More