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The public feud between Elon Musk and President Donald Trump has shown investors just how much control the US government has over Musk’s companies, Ark Invest CEO Cathie Wood says.
“I think the way this is evolving is Elon, Tesla, and investors are beginning to understand more and more just how much the government has control here,” Wood said in a video posted to the company’s YouTube channel on Friday.
Many of Musk’s companies have key links to the government and have received billions of dollars in federal loans, contracts, tax credits, and subsidies over the years.
“Elon is involved in companies that are depending on the government,” Wood said, pointing to Tesla, SpaceX, and Neuralink as examples.
SpaceX’s COO, Gwynne Shotwell, said last year that the company has $22 billion worth of federal contracts. Neuralink, Musk’s brain chip company, is subject to FDA regulation, and a less friendly regulatory environment could impact Tesla’s robotaxi rollout plans. Tesla stock fell more than 14% on Thursday after Musk and Trump became locked in a series of increasingly bitter clashes.
The feud appeared to begin, at least publicly, on Tuesday, after Musk criticized Trump’s “One Big Beautiful Bill.” He called it a “disgusting abomination” and said it would increase the national budget deficit.
Tensions rose fast between the once-close allies on Thursday. Trump threatened to cut Musk’s government contracts and Musk said SpaceX would immediately begin decommissioning its Dragon spacecraft — which returned stranded NASA astronauts Suni Williams and Butch Wilmore from the International Space Station in March.
Musk later retracted that threat, which Wood said was a sign he was “beginning to walk this back.”
Wood said the rift with Trump could, in part, be Musk’s attempt to further decouple himself from the Trump administration. Musk announced in April that he would be stepping back from his government work.
“One of the hypotheses out there is that what has happened was partly — not entirely — orchestrated,” Wood said. “Clearly, there has been some brand damage to Tesla, which he readily admits, and I think he’s trying to disengage from the government and being associated with one party or the other.”
Moving forward, Wood said neither Trump nor Musk needed to get “bogged down” with a fight and that she believed both would eventually heed that reasoning.
She also appeared to be confident that Musk could make the situation work for him. She said Musk “works really well under pressure” and that “he creates a lot of that chaos and pressure himself.”
Trump, however, signaled Saturday that he had no desire to fix his relationship with the SpaceX CEO anytime soon.
“I have no intention of speaking to him,” Trump told NBC News.
“I think it’s a very bad thing, because he’s very disrespectful. You could not disrespect the office of the President,” he added.
Vice President JD Vance struck a somewhat friendlier tone when asked about the possibility of reconciliation during a Thursday interview with podcaster Theo Von.
Vance said that while he thought it was a “huge mistake” for Musk to “go after the president,” he hoped Musk “figures it out” and “comes back into the fold.”
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