According to Foresight News, Elon Musk blasted Peter Navarro, Trump's senior trade advisor, defending his automotive company and expressing frustration with the government's tariff plans. "Tesla has the most American-made cars. Navarro is dumber than a bag of bricks," Musk wrote in another post, "Navarro is an idiot. What he says here is obviously wrong."

Navarro's view is that Elon Musk is a car assembler, not a traditional car manufacturer, because his factories rely on batteries from Japan and China, and electronics from Taiwan. Navarro emphasized that Americans want car parts to be produced domestically, such as tires manufactured in Akron, transmissions in Indianapolis, engines in Flint and Saginaw, and cars produced in the United States.