U.S. President Donald Trump’s trip to the Persian Gulf last week was all about big wins and sweet deals that he could tout to his base back in the United States, and he came away with $2 trillion in financial commitments from Saudi Arabia, Qatar, and the United Arab Emirates.
Some of those deals are also benefiting one of his most trusted lieutenants, billionaire Elon Musk. Musk announced during an investment summit in Riyadh that Saudi Arabia had approved the use of Starlink—the satellite internet service run by his company SpaceX—for use in the country, and the visit came weeks after his electric carmaker, Tesla, opened its first Saudi dealerships. Another of Musk’s companies, Neuralink, which makes computer chips it hopes to implant in people’s brains, announced it would conduct its first clinical trial in the Middle East, in the UAE capital of Abu Dhabi.
Musk, the world’s wealthiest man, is in need of new revenue streams. His support of Trump—both in the tens of millions of dollars he donated to Trump’s campaign and his leadership of the so-called Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) cost-cutting initiative that has fired thousands of U.S. government employees—has led to an immense backlash against his companies. Tesla, whose stock makes up most of Musk’s $370 billion net worth, saw its sales slump by a record 13 percent in the first three months of this year, and its profits plunged by more than 70 percent. Much of that drop came from the company’s prime markets in Europe and even in the United States, where Tesla has not only faced protests but also violence against its vehicles and dealerships.
In some cases, however, Musk’s close association with Trump has helped his businesses internationally, with countries taking steps to approve Starlink for use within their borders to get in Trump’s good books (and, in some cases, according to a report from the Washington Post, being pushed to do so by the Trump administration).
But even Trump and Musk’s bonhomie appears to be ending not with a bang, but a whimper. Musk’s influence, omnipresent during the first two months of Trump’s second term in office, has significantly waned in recent weeks as his 130-day term as a “special government employee” comes to a close. An analysis by Politico found that mentions of Musk by Trump officials and Republican lawmakers have dramatically reduced in recent weeks, and Trump himself has not posted about Musk on social media in more than a month.
Musk himself is looking to dial back his presence in Washington, telling reporters earlier this month that he would now only come to the U.S. capital “every other week.” Appearing virtually at the Qatar Economic Forum on Tuesday, the billionaire also said he would “do a lot less” political spending in the future. Asked whether it was in response to the blowback he’s received for his political activity so far, Musk said: “Well, if I see a reason to do political spending in the future, I’ll do it. I don’t currently see a reason.”
Musk isn’t yet completely absent from Trumpworld—he was in the Oval Office on Wednesday during Trump’s testy meeting with Cyril Ramaphosa, the president of Musk’s native South Africa, and also visited Capitol Hill and the Pentagon that same day.
Even on the Gulf trip, however, his deals were somewhat overshadowed by the coterie of U.S. companies whose chief executives also joined Trump, including Nvidia, Uber, Amazon, and OpenAI. Nvidia appears particularly well-positioned to cash in on the Gulf, signing agreements with Saudi Arabia on AI cooperation and expected to benefit from Trump’s deals to supply advanced chips to Saudi and UAE companies.
For Musk, the plan thus far appears to be to get back to business. But with those businesses still hurting and facing more uncertainty from his relationship with Trump, the big question remains how he turns it around and how much more his personal wealth—already down more than $60 billion so far this year—suffers.
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