Tesla CEO Elon Musk looks on next to U.S. President Donald Trump talking to the media, at the White House in Washington, D.C., U.S., March 11, 2025.
Kevin Lamarque | Reuters
Two companies led by billionaire DOGE chief Elon Musk — SpaceX and Tesla — have submitted letters lobbying the U.S. trade representative on Trump administration tariff policies.
The letters come as Musk oversees an effort to slash federal government spending and employee headcount at the behest of President Donald Trump.
They also come as Trump is imposing stiff tariffs on China, Mexico and Canada, with China and Canada firing back with retaliatory tariffs.
Tesla, in its letter to U.S. Trade Representative Jamieson Greer, noted those retaliatory levies as a threat to the electric vehicle company’s bottom line.
Tesla’s associate general counsel Miriam Eqab encouraged Greer “to consider the downstream impacts of certain proposed actions taken to address unfair trade practices.”
“While Tesla recognizes and supports the importance of fair trade, the assessment undertaken by USTR of
potential actions to rectify unfair trade should also take into account exports from the United States,” the letter said.
“U.S. exporters are inherently exposed to disproportionate impacts when other countries respond to U.S. trade actions.”
In its letter to Greer, SpaceX said it “faces a range of regulatory complexities and trade barriers in every country that the U.S. Government should seek to address in order to support continued U.S. leadership in the space domain.”
SpaceX’s senior director of global business and government affairs, Mat Dunn, in the letter noted that the company must pay foreign governments for access to spectrum and import duties for its Starlink satellite internet equipment, and other fees that “substantially increase the cost of operating in these countries — artificially.”
“The import duties paid in a handful of countries represent a significant cost increase for Starlink products in those countries, despite the United States having essentially no duties on similar foreign products that are imported into the United States to serve customers here,” Dunn wrote.
“As President Trump has noted with other sectors, this is a significant disadvantage to U.S. companies.
Tesla and SpaceX did not immediately respond to a request for comment from CNBC about their letters.
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