'Boys will be boys': White House dismisses trade feud LAID

The White House is attempting to paper over an ugly online spat between two of Donald Trump's close confidants about the tariff policies that have shaken stock markets and disturbed investors over the last six days, as the US president himself is doubling down on increasing the taxes Americans will pay on Chinese imports.

- ANDREW FEINBERG

Press secretary Karoline Leavitt yesterday dismissed an online war of words between Tesla and SpaceX chief executive turned White House adviser Elon Musk and Peter Navarro, the longtime Trump aide and China hawk who has pressed Mr Trump to tax Americans as a way of punishing foreign countries for trade deficits that are the result of market forces and decades-long trends in the globalisation of supply chains.

Earlier this week, Mr Navarro – a Harvard-trained economist whose fringe theories on trade policy concerning China attracted Mr Trump to him during the 2016 presidential election – sought to dismiss a question about Musk’s opposition to heavy tariffs on Chinese goods by describing Tesla as a “car assembler” reliant on foreign parts rather than a manufacturer even though Tesla vehicles use significant portions of American-made parts.

Writing on X, the social media platform he owns, Mr Musk said of Mr Navarro in response: “Navarro is truly a moron. What he says here is demonstrably false.” He later added that Tesla “has the most American-made cars” of any automaker and described Navarro as “dumber than a sack of bricks”.