“Manhattan Project of our time:” Did Trump just appoint Musk to drop a bomb on US economy?

For shareholders in Elon Musk’s electric vehicle and energy storage juggernaut, Tesla, the appointment of the Dear Leader to slash US government spending under the incoming Donald Trump administration could turn out to be a red-letter day.

The price of stock in Tesla has soared 40% since Trump’s election last week – adding around $A500 billion to its market worth, on the assumption that the new regime will be able to sweep away the regulatory hurdles that stand between Musk and his Robo-world of autonomous taxis and personal robots.

So much so, that Morgan Stanley even suggested that while the stock was overvalued, the political changes could result in a change of its valuation of the company from $US300 a share to $US500 a share, or a total of around $A2 trillion.

For almost everyone else, however, putting the world’s richest man in charge of ‘dismantling government bureaucracy, slashing excess regulations, cutting wasteful expenditures, and restructuring federal agencies,’ is unlikely to end well.

Trump announced on Wednesday (Australian time) that Musk will lead the newly minted Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE, of course) in partnership with former Republican presidential candidate and “American Patriot” Vivek Ramaswamy.

“This will send shockwaves through the system, and anyone involved in government waste, which is a lot of people!” Musk said in a joint Trump-Vance statement.

Ramaswamy, himself a rich-lister entrepreneur who founded a biotech company, marked his appointment to the role with a tweet on X saying, “we will not go gently, @elonmusk.”

In keeping with that theme, Trump described the new department and its mission as the “Manhattan Project of our time,” drawing a parallel to the World War II race to build – and drop – the first atomic bomb.

“Importantly, we will drive out the massive waste and fraud which exists throughout our annual $6.5 trillion of government spending,” Trump said.

“They will work together to liberate our economy and make the US government accountable to ‘WE THE PEOPLE.'”

For Musk, who has told reporters of plans to cut government spending by $US2 trillion, it is the deregulation and policy changes that stand to benefit his companies the most, including Tesla, SpaceX, X, and PowerLink.

As Renew Economy’s electric vehicle site The Driven reported last month, many leading market analysts believe that most of Tesla’s future earnings could come from full self-driving and the rollout of Robo-cabs – both of which have regulatory hurdles to overcome.

How these technologies, or Musk’s obsession with life on Mars, will benefit “We the people” remains to be seen. In the meantime, Tesla appears to have all but abandoned its mission to produce the something the world – and America – really needs: a low-cost electric vehicle.