The recent tension between Donald Trump and Elon Musk, which has become public, cannot be seen merely as a personal conflict between two media figures fond of polemics. This conflict is a current manifestation of the ideological and structural transformation underway within the American capitalist class, as well as the increasingly intense struggle for hegemony.
Trump’s political rise is closely linked to the fractures that became visible in the American economy following the 2008 financial crisis. During this period, the erosion of the middle class and the growing insecurity of the industrial workforce due to the financial crisis led to a realignment not only in society but also within the capitalist class. Established capital groups, such as ExxonMobil, Halliburton, and General Dynamics, came to believe that they could recover under protectionist policies that prioritised national interests in the face of China’s rise and increasing environmental regulations.
In this process, starting in 2016, Trump built a populist-nationalist movement that drew support not only from the working class but also from certain segments of capital that had positioned themselves as the losers of globalisation. Companies operating in sectors such as energy, defence, construction, and agriculture—largely organised at the state level—constituted blocs that neoliberal globalisation processes. For these companies, Trump emerged as a figure who directly represented their interests by promising to roll back environmental regulations, limit immigration, and increase government spending on defence.
The 2024 presidential election process made this division even more visible. When the funding sources of the Super PACs supporting Trump are examined, it is seen that the vast majority of donations came from energy, fossil fuel, mining, and defence companies. Led by energy and defence corporations such as Chevron, Valero, Raytheon, and Northrop Grumman, this bloc represents a vision of national capitalism based on production and energy independence.
On the other side is the Democratic capital bloc, which relies on global supply chains, immigrant labour, and deregulation in the digital sphere. Giant firms such as Alphabet Inc., Google, Apple, Amazon, and Microsoft provided millions of dollars in support to the Kamala Harris campaign in the 2024 elections. These companies aim to maintain the existing global order and preserve the advantages they have gained from it.
Rather than being merely a contradictory figure caught between competing blocs, Musk increasingly embodies a transitional form of capital—bridging national industrialism and global techno-capitalism. He is not organically tied to either traditional fossil fuel sectors or the deregulated tech giants of Silicon Valley. Instead, Musk represents an emerging technocratic bloc whose interests lie in future-oriented industries, such as AI, space infrastructure, and green energy. These sectors are heavily reliant on state funding and strategic alignment with long-term public policy objectives. Thus, Musk’s positioning is best understood not as an outlier or opportunist but as the nucleus of a third force within capital: techno-strategic capital seeking to influence the very direction of global capitalist transformation.
Especially after purchasing Twitter (X), Musk developed “anti-woke” and “anti-establishment” rhetoric, directly targeting Democratic elites. However, this rhetorical closeness does not indicate that Musk has an organic alliance with Trumpist capital. On the contrary, Musk possesses high symbolic and cultural capital; he represents a form of capital aligned with the global order, integrated with the state, and operating in future-shaping fields such as green technology, artificial intelligence, innovation, and space engineering.
Indeed, according to an analysis by The Washington Post, Musk and his companies have received at least 38 billion dollars over the years through government contracts, loans, subsidies, and tax breaks. In 2024 alone, federal and local governments provided at least 6.3 billion dollars in funding to Musk’s companies. This figure illustrates that Musk operates within an economic model that is directly influenced by public order and shaped by regulatory frameworks. Therefore, it can be said that there is a strategic and temporary alliance of interest between Trump’s protectionist, domestic production-oriented vision of national capital and Musk, an alliance shaped tactically through Trump’s pragmatic character.
To deepen this analysis, it is essential to frame the State not only as a dispenser of subsidies or deregulation but as an institutional field in which competing capital blocs vie to define the rules of accumulation. According to Bourdieu’s theory of social fields, the State is shaped and reshaped by these hegemonic contests. During Trump’s administration, the State was reoriented to serve domestic extraction and industrial production—via tariffs, immigration restrictions, and deregulatory actions that benefited fossil fuel and defence sectors. In contrast, under Biden and now Harris, state policy has tilted toward the green and digital economies, favouring firms in EV manufacturing, clean energy, and data infrastructure. The oscillation of state policy thus reflects an ongoing battle between rival capitalist visions, each attempting to monopolise political legitimation.
As intra-capital interest divergences deepened, this pragmatic alliance began to dissolve. The symbolic breaking point of this dissolution was the legislative proposal known as the “One Big Beautiful Bill Act.” This 1,116-page budget and tax bill, passed by the House of Representatives and forwarded to the Senate, was a comprehensive move to translate Trump’s political vision into legislation. The bill aimed to make the 2017 Trump tax cuts permanent, cancel incentives for clean energy, strengthen border security, and tighten trade controls. This meant reallocating resources from renewable energy back to manufacturing and fossil fuel sectors.
Trump’s long-standing position against immigrant labour was also reflected in the bill. During his first presidency, Trump tightened the H-1B visa program, arguing that these visas encouraged the employment of cheaper foreign workers instead of American engineers. However, this approach directly harms Musk’s business model. For example, according to H-1B visa data, Tesla was among the leading employers of newly hired foreign-born scientists and engineers in the 2024 fiscal year. In that year, the company received 742 approved H-1B petitions for initial employment—more than double the totals of 328 in fiscal year 2023 and 337 in 2022.
The bill also proposes relaxing automobile emission standards, reducing subsidies for electric vehicles, and designating coal as a “critical mineral.” While most of these provisions benefit the fossil fuel, automotive, and mining sectors, they pose a direct threat to electric vehicle producer Tesla. The elimination of the federal tax credit of 7,500 dollars per vehicle, on which Tesla’s incentive system operates, exemplifies the bill’s destructive implications for Musk.
The tipping point of the Trump-Musk divorce was reached following an explosive physical altercation in the White House between Elon Musk and Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent. According to Steve Bannon, who had insight into the situation, Bessent accused Musk of being a fraud—of promising $1 trillion in federal spending cuts and delivering next to nothing. That accusation triggered a fit of rage in Musk.
However, beyond the ephemeral nature of Musk’s tenure at DOGE and other material differences, the Trump–Musk split may also signal a deeper ideological divide. While Trump espouses a parochial vision of economic nationalism—focused on restoring domestic manufacturing and border controls—Musk appears to align with a techno-libertarian ethos. His public pronouncements emphasise innovation, decentralised governance, and global competitiveness over national interests. Musk’s ventures rely on open markets, international talent flows, and long-term scientific progress—elements often antithetical to Trump’s reactive, protectionist politics. This ideological incompatibility further explains why their tactical alliance was always precarious: their visions of the future diverge not only in economic policy but in the foundational philosophy of what capitalism should become.
In summary, although Trump’s political project is adorned with “anti-establishment” rhetoric, it is essentially based on the “restoration of national capitalism.” Protectionist tariffs, a trade war with China, and energy independence are the main pillars shaping this project. However, the global technology capital represented by Musk operates entirely outside this logic. Tesla’s supply chains are spread across Europe and China. Musk’s companies require not protectionist state intervention but rather an open and predictable functioning of global markets.
According to Bourdieu, social fields such as economy, politics, media, and technology function as autonomous yet interpenetrating structures. Each field contains its forms of capital; actors struggle to increase this capital and define the rules of the field. While the traditional capital blocs behind Trump mobilise economic and political capital, technology billionaires like Musk strive to build a global field based on cultural and technological capital. From this perspective, the Trump–Musk divergence is not merely a personal or tactical conflict but a current and dynamic example of the intra-capital struggle for hegemony.
Whether coordinated or impulsive, this shift reveals Musk’s deeper agenda: shaping the political landscape to serve his vision of a technocratic future. That vision is not new. Musk’s grandfather, Joshua Haldeman, was involved in the Canadian technocracy movement, which was banned for advocating rule by technical elites instead of democratic governance. Musk’s behaviour—his obsession with AI, his contempt for accountability, and his manipulation of media platforms—mirrors that ideological legacy.
The One Big Beautiful Bill process reveals that Musk has lost ground to the domestic capital bloc supporting Trump. This setback is likely to prompt him to seek a new political figure—someone more aligned with his interests and more receptive to influence. That figure will likely be JD Vance, a politician whose leadership style resembles Trump’s, yet who has also shaped his political career with the backing of tech giants, including public support from Musk himself. Vance’s hybrid appeal to both national conservatives and techno-libertarian elites positions him as a potential bridge between diverging capitalist blocs.
