Many were hoping that much of Trump’s campaign rhetoric is unlikely to transpire into policy action, trusting the ‘guardrails’ of the US legal system, much like in the first tenure. Not so much this time around as Trump not only acted on his tariff threats but is also equipped with the services of the world’s richest man, Elon Musk. Musk who has been tasked to lead the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) with the objective of cutting down wasteful government spending, and hence help reduce the US government’s massive deficit, a matter of concern not just for Americans but the world at large. He has gotten down to work without much ado, much like he did with Twitter (now X) when he took over a couple of years:
“JUST PAST midnight on February 3rd, Elon Musk appeared on X to explain what he is doing to the federal government. He had to speak over the patter of his four-year-old son, also called X. The bureaucracy, Mr Musk argued, constitutes “a fourth branch of government” which is “arguably the most powerful branch”. He then came to the US Agency for International Development (USAID), which he denounced as little more than a device to funnel taxpayers’ money to Marxists and criminals. He had, he claimed, the full support of Donald Trump and is “shutting it down”, notwithstanding that the agency’s existence is mandated by Congress. Later he posted that he had spent the weekend “feeding USAID into the woodchipper”.
Even as Mr Musk was speaking, workers at USAID’s headquarters in Washington were being told not to come in the next day. Some 600 of the agency’s staff seem to have been locked out of their emails. That followed a weekend in which the agency’s website went offline; its X feed was deleted; and workers from Mr Musk’s new government unit, the Department of Government Efficiency, or DOGE, reportedly tried to enter the agency and were initially stopped by senior staff from downloading classified data. Later on February 3rd Marco Rubio, the secretary of state, announced he had been made acting head of the agency while it faces “reorganisation”.
The takedown of USAID is the most dramatic example of what seems to be Mr Musk’s plan for the whole of government. It is drawn from his playbook as a corporate boss. Just over two years ago Mr Musk took over Twitter in a messy $44bn deal. Within a few months, much of which he spent at the company’s headquarters in San Francisco, he had reduced headcount by around four-fifths. A third of the staff accepted buyouts; many of the rest were fired. They included senior executives who were sacked instantly to stop their stock options vesting. Every decision, such as those about which Twitter accounts to ban, was put directly into Mr Musk’s hands.”
Similarities with the Twitter experience don’t end there:
“The first hints of Mr Musk’s seriousness came on January 28th, when more than 2m federal employees were sent an email by the Office of Personnel Management (OPM), the closest thing the government has to a human-resources department. The message offered “deferred resignation”. It had the subject line “fork in the road”, the same as in the email sent to Twitter employees when Mr Musk took over there. Lots of federal employees have been sent two more emails affirming the offer since. One went out to air-traffic controllers less than a day after a plane crash in Washington, DC, which has raised questions about short-staffing at Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport.”
A couple of months ago, we featured an interview with the Argentinian President, Javier Milei who is credited with the most dramatic reduction in government deficit by taking an axe to the role of the state, something Musk has publicly acknowledged as an inspiration. Yet, it pales in front of Musk’s modus operandi at DOGE in the first two weeks:
“…DOGE seems to be an entirely new thing. Many of its employees seem to be junior workers pulled in very recently from Mr Musk’s many private firms. Their names have not been made public. But Wired, a magazine, has identified six engineers now working with DOGE. The one who sent the email shutting down USAID, Gavin Kliger, graduated from high school in 2017. The youngest of the six, Edward Coristine, is 19; his relevant work experience consists of a few months interning at Neuralink, Mr Musk’s brain-implant firm. On his now-deleted LinkedIn profile, he took the moniker “bigballs”.”
Whilst the world is lauding Argentina’s success in reducing its deficit, doing it at American scale will be of interest to all of us in the coming weeks and months.
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