Tesla Chief Executive Officer Elon Musk has sharply criticised the United States' fiscal policies, warning that "America will go bankrupt" if the country fails to curb its rising trade deficit.
In an interview on Tuesday, Musk expressed concern over the nation's spending patterns and accused bureaucratic inefficiency of exacerbating the problem.
Musk stated that President Donald Trump had inherited a USD 2 trillion trade deficit and emphasised the urgency of reducing it.
"Well, the overall goal is to try to get a trillion dollars out of the deficit. And if the deficit is not brought under control, America will go bankrupt. This is a very important thing for people to understand. A country is no different from an individual, in that if an individual overspends, an individual can go bankrupt, and so can a country," Musk said during the interview.
The Tesla CEO also lambasted the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) spending, arguing that taxpayers should be incensed by the government's handling of public funds.
"I think the average taxpaying American should be mad as hell because their tax money is being poorly spent," he remarked.
President Trump echoed Musk's concerns and blamed the previous Democratic administration for the current economic challenges.
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"Yes, we inherited it," Trump said, referencing the trade deficit. He accused the Democrats of reckless spending, adding, "They spent money like nobody has ever spent. They were given USD 9 trillion to throw out the window—USD 9 trillion, and they spent it on the Green New Scam, I call it. It's the greatest scam in the history of the country."
Musk further criticised bureaucratic resistance to implementing the administration's directives, describing it as a fundamental threat to democracy.
"All we're really trying to do here is restore the will of the people through the president. And what we're finding is there's an unelected bureaucracy... If the will of the president is not implemented, and the president is representative of the people, that means the will of the people is not being implemented, and that means we don't live in a democracy, we live in a bureaucracy," Musk argued.
Highlighting the alleged misuse of government contracts, Trump pointed to instances of long-standing financial mismanagement.
"They sign a contract in a government agency, and it has three months. And the guy leaves that signed the contract, and nobody else is there, and they pay the contract for 10 years," he said, describing the waste as either deliberate corruption or bureaucratic incompetence.
Trump praised Musk's work with DOGE and his efforts to uncover financial irregularities. "They're finding billions and it will be hundreds of billions of dollars' worth of fraud. I say waste and abuse, but fraud, waste, and abuse. And he's doing an amazing job," Trump said.
Musk defended the administration's cost-cutting measures and argued that the federal bureaucracy's opposition was politically motivated. Citing the District of Columbia's voting record, he claimed that bureaucrats were overwhelmingly aligned with the Democratic Party. "It's 92 percent Kamala. Okay, so we're in 92 percent Kamala. That's a lot," Musk said.
Musk framed the upcoming presidential election as an opportunity to "fix the system" and "restore the power of democracy."
In the interview, Trump also took aim at several media organisations, including MSNBC, CNN, PBS, AP, and CBS, accusing them of biased reporting.
"Bad, horrible, and terrible," he said of their coverage, while also alleging that CBS had altered a statement by former Vice-President Kamala Harris.
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