Tesla CEO Elon Musk watches as President Donald Trump talks to the media, outside the White House in Washington, D.C., 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.
But the two companies had different messages for U.S. Trade Representative Jamieson Greer.
The electric vehicle maker Tesla warned of the negative effect on its bottom line from tariffs and from duties imposed by other countries on U.S.-made products in retaliation for those tariffs.
SpaceX complained that operating costs for its Starlink internet satellite service are increased by trade barriers abroad, while foreign competitors face no such costs in the United States.
The letters come as Musk oversees the so-called Department of Government Efficiency, an effort to slash federal government spending and employee head count at the behest of President Donald Trump.
At the same time, Trump is imposing stiff tariffs on China, Mexico and Canada, with China and Canada firing back with retaliatory tariffs.
The letters are two of more than 700 received so far by the trade representative’s office in response to an invitation for public comment on “unfair trade practices by other countries.” The responses are posted on a public docket.
Jamieson Greer, President Donald Trump’s nominee to be U.S. trade representative, testifies during his Senate Finance Committee confirmation hearing, in the Dirksen Senate Office Building, Feb. 6, 2025.
Tom Williams | CQ-Roll Call, Inc. | Getty Images
Tesla, in its unsigned letter to Greer, encouraged him “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,” said the letter, which was submitted by Tesla’s associate general counsel Miriam Eqab.
“U.S. exporters are inherently exposed to disproportionate impacts when other countries respond to U.S. trade actions.”
Tesla noted that, “Past U.S. special tariff actions have thus (1) increased costs to Tesla for vehicles manufactured in the United States, and (2) increased costs for those same vehicles when exported from the United States, resulting in less competitive international marketplace for U.S. manufacturers.”
“USTR should investigate ways to avoid these pitfalls in future action,” the letter said.
SpaceX, in its letter to Greer, said that 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.”
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,” wrote Mat Dunn, SpaceX’s senior director of global business and government affairs, in the letter.
“As President Trump has noted with other sectors, this is a significant disadvantage to U.S. companies,” Dunn wrote.
Tesla and SpaceX did not immediately respond to a request for comment from CNBC about their letters.