White House Trade Adviser Peter Navarro said that billionaire Elon Musk only “assembles cars”, not manufactures cars in the US, and does not understand tax policy.

“On tariff and trade policy, anyone in the White House, and the American people, thinks that Elon Musk is a car manufacturer, but he is not. He is a car assembler,” White House Trade Adviser Peter Navarro said in an interview with CNBC on April 7, adding that many of Tesla’s components are imported from Japan, mainland China and Taiwan.

According to Navarro, car assemblers like Musk would only want to import cheap components from outside, while the Trump administration wants to increase production in the US.

“The difference in thinking between us and Elon is that we want tires made in Arkon, transmissions made in Indianapolis, engines made in Flint and Saginaw. We want cars made in the US,” he said.

Asked about recent comments from tech billionaire Elon Musk questioning his ability to work on trade policy, Navarro said the two have not spoken directly, but insisted that “between Elon and me, everything is fine.”

He stressed that the comments from the head of the Office of Government Efficiency (DOGE) were “no big deal” and that the two would meet at the White House sooner or later for meetings with President Trump.

Navarro said Musk and the DOGE team are doing the country a real service by cutting “waste and fraud” in the budget. However, the White House adviser noted that the tech billionaire is not familiar with the Trump administration’s tax policy.

White House Trade Adviser Peter Navaro speaks in Washington on March 12. Photo: AFP

A day earlier, the White House adviser also said that Musk was “just protecting his own interests” when commenting on tax policy. He said Tesla’s supply chain was suffering greatly from the reciprocal tariffs because they imported many parts from abroad.

“Elon owns X, so he has a megaphone. We don’t care what he wants. We just want the American people to know that everything is fine,” he said.

Elon Musk has repeatedly criticized trade officials in the Trump administration in recent days, related to the reciprocal tariff policy with most of the US’s economic partners. The tariffs announced by Mr. Trump last week caused global markets to plummet, affecting even the super-rich like Musk. According to CNBC analysis, Musk has lost more than $30 billion since Mr. Trump announced the new tariffs.

On April 6, Musk posted a comment on X criticizing adviser Navarro as “inexperienced and theoretical”.

Musk said that Mr. Navarro’s PhD in economics from Harvard University is actually “a bad thing, not a good thing” and “makes his ego bigger than his actual ability”, after the White House adviser mentioned his personal academic background when commenting on tax policy on CNN.

When someone defended Navarro on X, Musk immediately retorted: “He has never built anything”. The 53-year-old billionaire also shared a comment by American economist Thomas Sowell, writing that “every disaster in American history has had a central role played by someone from Harvard”.