Elon Musk Already Abusing His Perch for Personal Gain at Expense of 10,000 Manufacturing Jobs

Washington, D.C. – Even before Donald Trump takes office, Elon Musk is already abusing the power of his pseudo-government office for personal gain. As the Department of Energy is working to support American manufacturing and auto workers, Musk’s co-chair Vivek Ramaswamy has repeatedly singled out loans provided to other EV companies that compete with Musk’s company, saying the loans should be “rescinded”

Cancelling the loan guarantees  would violate a U.S. government contract without cause. As a senior administration official told Reuters, “When funds are obligated, they are protected. They are subject to the terms of the contract, so when those contracts are signed and executed, this becomes a matter of contract law more than matter of politics.”

Jesse Lee, Climate Power senior advisor for clean energy economy, condemned the threats:

“Elon Musk has barely set up the Twitter account for his office, and he is using his perch to pad his profits by attacking his competitors. One of the very first examples of supposed ‘waste’ that his staff has threatened just happens to be a pair of loans that support more than 10,000 American manufacturing jobs under his EV competitors. Musk has already launched himself into likely the greatest dollar-for-dollar conflict of interest in American history, and he’ll likely break his own record repeatedly. The irony is that Tesla only exists today because of a loan from the same government office under President Obama. It’s clear that Trump and Elon have joined forces to crush all American EV manufacturing—except Elon’s—ceding the rest of the industry to China.”