Vivek Ramaswamy, tapped by President-elect Donald Trump to lead a commission to slash government spending alongside Elon Musk, excoriated his new partner as a puppet of China’s governing Communist Party.
“I have no reason to think Elon won’t jump like a circus monkey when Xi Jinping calls in the hour of need,” he said on an episode of his own podcast last year, referring to the Chinese president after Musk’s Tesla announced it was building a manufacturing plant in Shanghai.
Ramaswamy’s remarks were uncovered by a CNN review of his appearances on podcasts and his posts on social media.
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Trump says he and Musk will lead the Department of Government Efficiency, or DOGE, a commission that will review US federal spending with the aim of recommending massive cuts.
A longtime China hawk who has argued in favor of severing ties from the country, Ramaswamy and Musk have differed wildly in their approaches to the world’s second largest economy.
Tesla made $21.75 billion in revenue from its China operations last year, good for 22.5 percent of the total, according to a regulatory filing.
Musk’s has also made comments suggesting Taiwan should become a special administrative region of China, which earned applause from mainland officials and extra ire from his future DOGE partner.
“He got a nice ‘attaboy’ on the back, a little pat on the back when his Shanghai factory and regulator in China gave him a nice little tax break within days after him having made that comment about Taiwan,” Ramaswamy told UK news outlet Unherd in 2022.
Ramaswamy also accused Musk—who has floated the idea of $2 trillion in government spending—of keeping his companies afloat with government largesse.
“Both Tesla and SpaceX quite likely would not exist as successful businesses if it were not for the use of public funding, either through subsidies through the electric car industry, or through actual government contracting in the case of SpaceX,” he told a Fox News podcast two years ago.
Researchers at Good Jobs First have tallied over $2.8 billion in cumulative federal, state and local subsidies received by Tesla since 2014.
SpaceX has received close to $19.8 billion in federal contracts since 2009, including $3.8 billion in the 2024 fiscal year.
While happily accepting taxpayer money, Musk advocated for the removal of all subsidies from all industries.
Ramaswamy told CNN that he and Musk “aired some of these issues the first time we spoke” and said they are now close and on good terms.
“I love him and respect the hell out of him, and I’m proud to call him a friend,” he added. “The only country he puts first is the same one I do: the United States of America.”
