He can’t quit him — easily. Why SpaceX could complicate the Trump-Musk split

Analysis | CBC News | Posted: June 7, 2025 8:00 AM | Last Updated: June 7

U.S. president could put regulatory squeeze on former ally’s companies

Image | Trump Caption: U.S. President Donald Trump speaks to reporters with Elon Musk in the Oval Office on May 30. The sudden, very public split between the former allies raises questions about Washington’s reliance on Musk’s companies, and vice versa. (Evan Vucci/The Associated Press) Load Image Open Image in New Tab (external link)

Billions of dollars lost in government contracts. A slew of regulatory headaches. These are just some of the ramifications Elon Musk could face over his fallout with U.S. President Donald Trump.

The two men may have personally split, at least for now. But if Trump is seeking to retaliate against the tech billionaire, severing the relationship between Musk’s many companies and the U.S. government could prove difficult, analysts say.

“I would say the president has more cards than Musk does, but it doesn’t mean that [Musk] doesn’t have any,” said Peter Hays, a lecturer of space policy and international affairs at George Washington University’s Space Policy Institute.

Both sides have “all kinds of leverage on each other,” added Dan Grazier, senior fellow and program director at the D.C.-based Stimson Center, a think-tank focused on international security.

The public fallout came after Musk repeatedly criticized Trump’s spending bill. Trump eventually lashed back, posting on Truth Social that the easiest way to save “Billions and Billion of Dollars” would be to “terminate Elon’s Governmental Subsidies and Contracts.”

However, those threats might not be so simple to implement.

Image | APTOPIX SpaceX Stuck Astronauts Caption: A SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket, with a crew of four aboard the Crew Dragon spacecraft, lifts off on a mission to the International Space Station from the Kennedy Space Center in Cape Canaveral, Fla., on March 14. (John Raoux/The Associated Press) Load Image Open Image in New Tab (external link)

SpaceX, satellite contracts

SpaceX has $15 billion US worth of contracts from NASA for the company’s Falcon 9 rockets and its development of the multipurpose Starship rocket system, tapped to land NASA astronauts on the moon this decade.

The company has also been awarded billions of dollars to launch most of the Pentagon’s national security satellites into space while it builds a massive spy satellite constellation.

That’s why, if Trump cancels those contracts, SpaceX would have to seriously rethink its business model, Grazier says.

Musk “needs the government to keep his company operating as they are,” he said.

But the U.S. government is also reliant on SpaceX, he says. For example, it’s the only U.S. company capable right now of transporting crews to and from the International Space Station, using its four-person Dragon capsules.

“Trump needs Elon Musk in pretty much the exact same way that Elon Musk needs President Trump, as far as SpaceX goes,” Grazier said.

“It’s not like the United States has a credible alternative to SpaceX right now as far as space launch goes,” he said. “And the United States needs reliable space launch capabilities.”

WATCH | Feud explodes into public view: Media Video | The National : Threats, insults as Trump-Musk feud explodes into public view Caption: U.S. President Donald Trump’s feud with the world’s richest man, Elon Musk, has exploded into public view as the two trade threats and insults on social media. Trump accused Musk of going ‘crazy,’ while Musk alleged Trump is ‘in the Epstein files.’ Open Full Embed in New Tab (external link) Loading external pages may require significantly more data usage than loading CBC Lite story pages.

Tearing up SpaceX contracts would have a huge domino effect across a lot of the government’s critical functions in space, according to Clayton Swope, senior fellow at the Center for Strategic and International Studies.

And those functions are “most closely centred around the Pentagon and NASA,” he told Bloomberg News.

But if Trump holds off on cancelling SpaceX contracts, and is looking for another way to poke at Musk, he could put the squeeze on Musk’s companies through the government’s regulatory agencies, some experts say.

“Those can all be leverage points for the administration,” said Cary Coglianese, director of the University of Pennsylvania’s Penn program on regulation.

Last year, Musk was waging at least 11 separate regulatory or legal battles with the Biden administration or independent federal agencies related to his business empire, according to NBC News (external link) . This might have been why, in part, Musk eventually endorsed Trump, who had pledged during the presidential campaign to slash regulations.

WATCH | How the feud started: Media Video | Hanomansing Tonight : How Trump’s tax bill ignited his feud with Musk | Hanomansing Tonight Caption: Jeff Mason, Reuters White House correspondent, explains how U.S. President Donald Trump’s signature ‘big, beautiful’ tax bill was the source of his public feud with billionaire Elon Musk and the potential impact it will have. Open Full Embed in New Tab (external link) Loading external pages may require significantly more data usage than loading CBC Lite story pages.

Yet Trump could now pressure those same agencies to make Musk’s life difficult. Just some of the regulators Musk’s business empire must deal with include the Federal Communications Commission for his satellite internet service Starlink, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration for Tesla, and the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) for SpaceX.

The FAA, under pressure from Trump, or to curry his favour, could say it’s not going to approve any SpaceX launch permits, says Roger Nober, director of the Regulatory Studies Center, also at George Washington University.

For Tesla, for example, Trump could pressure regulators to deny necessary approvals of its autonomous driving program, or could renew investigations into the safety of its full self-driving software, some analysts told ABC News.

“If full self-driving were to be invalidated, that would be a huge hit to Tesla stock and to Musk,” Gordon Johnson, CEO and founder of the data firm GLJ Research, told ABC.

Although the courts shouldn’t tolerate such actions if they are shown to be vindictive, the president wouldn’t necessarily need a “litigation-proof strategy to really mess up” Musk’s life, Coglianese said.

It could still be “very painful and problematic” for Musk, while courts sorted out the issues, he said.

“And if Musk’s operations get delayed or disrupted, that can mean real money.”

Nober says he believes that any lasting regulatory change against Musk’s companies would be difficult to implement, given his very public spat with Trump and that the president said he’s going to punish his one-time friend.

“If they then initiate regulatory action that’s intended punish any of Musk’s business… it’s going to be vulnerable to challenge on the theory that it was arbitrary,” he said.

However, there may be other minor administrative regulatory roadblocks that government agencies could impose on Musk that would be difficult to challenge in court, Nober says.

“They can make life difficult” for Musk, he said.

On Thursday, amid their war of words, shares of Tesla plunged more than 14 per cent, leaving $150 billion US of the electric automaker’s value erased by the end of trading day.

The plunge was probably because Tesla, like a lot of Musk’s companies, have a lot of little things they deal with, with a lot of regulatory bodies, Nober says.

“Just making those more difficult, or slowing them down, or reviewing them, or taking longer to turn things around, has a cumulative impact,” he said.

How the U.S. became highly reliant on Elon Musk for access to space

toggle caption Patrick T. Fallon/AFP via Getty Images

SpaceX is best known for its high-profile crewed missions to the International Space Station and its ambitious Starship program. But the U.S. has become increasingly reliant on the company for critical and sometimes secret space operations. This relationship is now jeopardized by the escalating feud between SpaceX founder Elon Musk and President Trump.

The ongoing dispute highlights the deep interdependence between the U.S. government and SpaceX. Trump has threatened to cut SpaceX’s federal contracts. Musk fired back by saying that his company would decommission its Dragon capsule, which is currently America’s only means of transportation to the space station. He later deleted the original tweet.

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During the Obama administration, Lori Garver served as deputy administrator of NASA and she actively championed partnerships between the space agency and SpaceX. At that time, Musk’s rocket company was struggling to prove it could reliably send satellites into orbit. Garver calls the war of words between Trump and Musk “really disconcerting.”

“When Elon shot back bringing SpaceX into it, I think that was strategically a mistake,” she says. “It just highlights for government leaders the risk in having a prime large aerospace and defense contractor run by one individual.”

During Garver’s tenure at NASA, SpaceX was viewed as an underdog in the satellite launch business, trying to stand out against United Launch Alliance (ULA), a joint venture formed to provide launch services to the government and comprising aerospace heavyweights Lockheed Martin and Boeing.

But SpaceX’s powerful Falcon rockets changed that dynamic, according to Laura Forczyk, owner of the space consulting firm Astralytical. The big shift occurred when SpaceX put considerable money and effort into perfecting an innovative system to soft-land the rocket’s booster stage for refurbishment and reuse. This innovation increased launch frequency and reduced costs, which made SpaceX more attractive to the Pentagon.

Forczyk said the Defense Department “began to rely more on SpaceX because of that increased launch capacity as well as the lower bid when it came to launch contracts.”

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Today, SpaceX dominates both the U.S. and global launch markets. According to BryceTech, a private analytics firm, SpaceX launched 83% of all spacecraft worldwide last year.

The Defense Department has also come to rely heavily on SpaceX’s Starlink global satellite internet service, with about 50 military commands now using it, according to Defense News. In 2021, SpaceX also signed a classified $1.8 billion contract with the U.S. National Reconnaissance Office to launch a network of satellites designed to create a government-owned encrypted version of Starlink for military use on future battlefields.

Tim Farrar, president of TMF Associates, a space consultancy, says the U.S. would find it challenging to move away from Starlink, which requires dozens of launches to put its network of satellites in orbit. While other companies aim to compete with Starlink for Defense Department business, “it’s proving very difficult for those others to catch up,” he says.

Russia’s war in Ukraine has highlighted the potential danger of having a single powerful individual like Musk in control of a critical technology such as Starlink. The SpaceX CEO has repeatedly threatened to cut off Kyiv’s access to the satellite network.

Garver credits SpaceX with securing government contracts by consistently “underbidding, overdelivering, performing, and beating out the competition.” She says during her time at NASA, the agency’s approach was to award multiple contracts for the same mission to avoid overreliance on a single provider. Even so, Garver says, SpaceX, “got less money to do more — and went earlier, more often, and succeeded.”

toggle caption Miguel J. Rodriguez Carrillo/AFP via Getty Images

That has meant that rocket company’s Crew Dragon, originally intended as a backup to Boeing’s Starliner for trips to Earth orbit, ended up leaping forward in development. It has since become NASA’s main transport to the space station, while Starliner has struggled. On a crewed test mission last year, a malfunction with Starliner’s thrusters forced a months-long delay in bringing two astronauts back from orbit. The two ultimately came home aboard a SpaceX Dragon.

Garver says this situation validates NASA’s multiple-contract strategy.

“It’s why we have multiple cargo providers and why Boeing’s Starliner, despite delays, still matters.”

If Musk were to stop making Dragon capsules available for flights to the space station, in theory, NASA might have to revert to relying on Russia to provide Soyuz rockets for transport, as it did for nine years following the retirement of the Space Shuttle in 2011 until the first crewed SpaceX mission in 2020. But this could be risky given the current geopolitical environment, consultant Forczyk says.

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A lunar-lander version of SpaceX’s Starship is at the center of efforts to return astronauts to the Moon for the first time since 1972 as part of NASA’s Artemis program. Nevertheless, Starship has already experienced multiple launch and reentry failures, making it unlikely to meet NASA’s goal of landing on the Moon in 2027 as part of the Artemis 3 mission. The giant rocket has yet to reach orbit, let alone complete the complex refueling operation necessary for a journey to the Moon and eventually Mars.

Meanwhjile, Musk has expressed doubts about the desirability of returning to the Moon. In a post on X, he called the moon mission a “distraction,” suggesting that traveling to Mars — a long-time goal of Musk’s — was the real priority.

Trump’s original nominee for NASA administrator, Jared Isaacman, a close ally of Musk, had traveled to space twice aboard a SpaceX capsule. Isaacman had promised to get the agency working on a crewed mission to Mars. Trump withdrew his nomination shortly after Musk left the government, reportedly further infuriating the tech billionaire.

Without Starship to land on the Moon, there will “have to be significant changes to the plans there and probably a substantial postponement of the planned timetable for Artemis,” Farrar says.

But there is a Plan B. Jeff Bezos’ Blue Origin company is developing a moon lander known as Blue Moon.

“NASA could modify the contract and assign Blue Origin’s Blue Moon lander to Artemis 3,” but Blue Origin has a long way to go in development too, Garver says.

toggle caption Mark Wilson/Getty Images North America

Ultimately, neither Trump nor Musk could easily act on their threats to end SpaceX contracts.

“Canceling SpaceX contracts as a personal vendetta wouldn’t stand up in the courts,” Garver says regarding Trump. Similarly, Musk’s suggestion to halt resupply and re-crewing of the space station would be impractical, she adds.

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While NASA has yet to select the crew for the Artemis 3 landing, Garver thinks the space agency is unlikely to cancel the mission due to Musk’s blustering or Starship’s repeated delays.

Garver says anyone selected for the moon landing “recognizes this is years away and the Starship lander is just one of a number of pieces of that architecture that aren’t yet ready to go.”

SpaceX benefits from billions of dollars in contracts from NASA and the Department of Defense, which use many of the company’s spacecraft to help launch government missions.

SpaceX’s famous two-stage Falcon 9 rocket ‒ one of the world’s most active ‒ is routinely the rocket of choice to get many NASA missions off the ground.

SpaceX’s Dragon capsule is also a famous vehicle that is widely used for a variety of spaceflights, many of which have a crew.

When President Donald Trump took office in January, he began offering plenty of signs that his goals for U.S. spaceflight aligned closely with those of billionaire tech mogul Elon Musk.

Now those goals, which included making reaching Mars during Trump’s second term a top priority, appear to be up in the air with the increasingly volatile fallout between two of the world’s most powerful men.

As insults have turned to threats, Trump has suggested he’d hit Musk where it could hurt most: His wallet. Musk’s SpaceX has spent years positioning itself at the center of American civil and military spaceflight – a profitable relationship that has made the company’s founder incredibly wealthy.

In response, Musk has floated – and then retracted – the idea of decommissioning a SpaceX vehicle critical to NASA’s spaceflight program.

Serious threats, or empty words? That remains to be seen as Musk and Trump reportedly consider a détente.

In the meantime, here’s what to know about what’s at stake if the U.S. government’s relationship with SpaceX were to crumble:

Trump threatens Elon Musk’s government contracts

The feud between Trump and his former top adviser escalated in a dramatic fashion when the president threatened to cut off the taxpayer dollars that have fueled Elon Musk’s businesses, including SpaceX.

“The easiest way to save money in our Budget, Billions and Billions of Dollars, is to terminate Elon’s Governmental Subsidies and Contracts,” Trump said in a post on his social media platform. “I was always surprised that Biden didn’t do it!”

In all, Musk and his businesses have received at least $38 billion in government contracts, loans, subsidies and tax credits, a Washington Post analysis found.

With SpaceX as the fulcrum of much of the U.S. government’s spaceflight programs, parting ways with the commercial company would leave a void that would be hard to fill. But NASA Press Secretary Bethany Stevens said in a post on social media site X that “NASA will continue to execute upon the President’s vision for the future of space.”

“We will continue to work with our industry partners to ensure the President’s objectives in space are met,” Stevens wrote.

What is SpaceX? Musk’s company is based in Texas

Elon Musk, the world’s richest man, founded SpaceX, in 2002.

In July 2024, Musk announced his intentions to move his company, as well as social media platform X’s headquarters, from California to Texas. The move was in response to his personal frustrations over a public school policy in California regarding transgender students.

Now, the commercial spaceflight company is headquartered at Starbase in South Texas about 180 miles south of Corpus Christi. The site, which is where SpaceX has been conducting routine flight tests of its 400-foot megarocket known as Starship, was recently voted by residents to become its own city.

SpaceX conducts many of its own rocket launches, most using the Falcon 9 rocket, from both California and Florida. That includes a regular cadence of deliveries of Starlink internet satellites into orbit, and occasional privately-funded commercial crewed missions on the Dragon.

The most recent of SpaceX’s private human spaceflights, a mission known as Fram2, took place in April. SpaceX was also famously involved in funding and operating the headline-grabbing Polaris Dawn crewed commercial mission in September 2024.

SpaceX’s Falcon 9 rocket used for many NASA missions

SpaceX benefits from billions of dollars in contracts from NASA and the Department of Defense by providing launch services for classified satellites and other payloads.

Gwynne Shotwell, CEO of SpaceX, has said the company has about $22 billion in government contracts, according to Reuters. The vast majority of that, about $15 billion, is derived from NASA.

SpaceX’s famous two-stage Falcon 9 rocket ‒ one of the world’s most active ‒ is routinely the rocket of choice to get many NASA missions off the ground. For instance, the rocket is due in the days ahead to help propel a four-person crew of private astronauts to the International Space Station for a venture with NASA known as Axiom Mission 4.

NASA also has plans to use SpaceX’s Starship in its Artemis lunar missions to ferry astronauts aboard the Orion capsule from orbit to the moon’s surface. The rocket, which is in development, has yet to reach orbit in any of its nine flight tests beginning in April 2023.

What is the SpaceX Dragon? Capsule is vital to US spaceflight

SpaceX’s Dragon capsule is also a famous vehicle that is widely used for a variety of spaceflights. The capsule, which sits atop the Falcon 9 for launches to orbit, is capable of transporting both NASA astronauts and cargo to the space station.

Under NASA’s commercial crew program, the U.S. space agency has been paying SpaceX for years to conduct routine spaceflights to the International Space Station using the company’s own launch vehicles.

The first of SpaceX’s Crew missions ferrying astronauts to the orbital outpost on the Dragon began in 2020, with the tenth and most recent contingent reaching the station in March for about a six-month stay. Standing nearly 27 feet tall and about 13 feet wide, Dragon capsules can carry up to seven astronauts into orbit, though most of SpaceX’s Crew missions feature a crew of four.

The Dragon spacecraft also was the vehicle NASA selected to bring home the two NASA astronauts who rode the doomed Boeing Starliner capsule to the space station in June 2024. Certifying the Starliner capsule for operation would give NASA a second vehicle in addition to Dragon for regular spaceflights to orbit.

Musk says he could decommission Dragon before backing off

Because Boeing is still developing its Starliner capsule, Dragon is the only U.S. vehicle capable of carrying astronauts to and from the space station. It’s also one of four vehicles contracted to transport cargo and other supplies to the orbital laboratory.

For that reason, Musk’s threat Thursday, June 5 to decommission the Dragon “immediately” would be a severe blow to NASA if he were to follow through on it. Musk, though, appears to already be backing off on the suggestion, which he made in response to Trump’s own threats.

In response to a user who advised Musk to “Cool off and take a step back for a couple days,” Musk replied: “Good advice. Ok, we won’t decommission Dragon.”

Seven astronauts are aboard the International Space Station, including three Americans. Four of the astronauts rode a SpaceX Dragon to the station for a mission known as Crew-10, while the remaining three launched on a Russian Soyuz spacecraft.

Contributing: Joey Garrison, Josh Meyer, USA TODAY; Reuters

Eric Lagatta is the Space Connect reporter for the USA TODAY Network. Reach him at elagatta@gannett.com

Billions of dollars lost in government contracts. A slew of regulatory headaches. These are just some of the ramifications Elon Musk could face over his fallout with U.S. President Donald Trump.

The two men may have personally split, at least for now. But if Trump is seeking to retaliate against the tech billionaire, severing the relationship between Musk’s many companies and the U.S. government could prove difficult, analysts say.

“I would say the president has more cards than Musk does, but it doesn’t mean that [Musk] doesn’t have any,” said Peter Hays, a lecturer of space policy and international affairs at George Washington University’s Space Policy Institute.

Both sides have “all kinds of leverage on each other,” added Dan Grazier, senior fellow and program director at the D.C.-based Stimson Center, a think-tank focused on international security.

The public fallout came after Musk repeatedly criticized Trump’s spending bill. Trump eventually lashed back, posting on Truth Social that the easiest way to save “Billions and Billion of Dollars” would be to “terminate Elon’s Governmental Subsidies and Contracts.”

However, those threats might not be so simple to implement.

A SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket, with a crew of four aboard the Crew Dragon spacecraft, lifts off on a mission to the International Space Station from the Kennedy Space Center in Cape Canaveral, Fla., on March 14. (John Raoux/The Associated Press)

SpaceX, satellite contracts

SpaceX has $15 billion US worth of contracts from NASA for the company’s Falcon 9 rockets and its development of the multipurpose Starship rocket system, tapped to land NASA astronauts on the moon this decade.

The company has also been awarded billions of dollars to launch most of the Pentagon’s national security satellites into space while it builds a massive spy satellite constellation.

That’s why, if Trump cancels those contracts, SpaceX would have to seriously rethink its business model, Grazier says.

Musk “needs the government to keep his company operating as they are,” he said.

But the U.S. government is also reliant on SpaceX, he says. For example, it’s the only U.S. company capable right now of transporting crews to and from the International Space Station, using its four-person Dragon capsules.

“Trump needs Elon Musk in pretty much the exact same way that Elon Musk needs President Trump, as far as SpaceX goes,” Grazier said.

“It’s not like the United States has a credible alternative to SpaceX right now as far as space launch goes,” he said. “And the United States needs reliable space launch capabilities.”

WATCH | Feud explodes into public view: Threats, insults as Trump-Musk feud explodes into public view Duration 2:27 U.S. President Donald Trump’s feud with the world’s richest man, Elon Musk, has exploded into public view as the two trade threats and insults on social media. Trump accused Musk of going ‘crazy,’ while Musk alleged Trump is ‘in the Epstein files.’

Tearing up SpaceX contracts would have a huge domino effect across a lot of the government’s critical functions in space, according to Clayton Swope, senior fellow at the Center for Strategic and International Studies.

And those functions are “most closely centred around the Pentagon and NASA,” he told Bloomberg News.

But if Trump holds off on cancelling SpaceX contracts, and is looking for another way to poke at Musk, he could put the squeeze on Musk’s companies through the government’s regulatory agencies, some experts say.

“Those can all be leverage points for the administration,” said Cary Coglianese, director of the University of Pennsylvania’s Penn program on regulation.

Last year, Musk was waging at least 11 separate regulatory or legal battles with the Biden administration or independent federal agencies related to his business empire, according to NBC News. This might have been why, in part, Musk eventually endorsed Trump, who had pledged during the presidential campaign to slash regulations.

WATCH | How the feud started: How Trump’s tax bill ignited his feud with Musk | Hanomansing Tonight Duration 7:21 Jeff Mason, Reuters White House correspondent, explains how U.S. President Donald Trump’s signature ‘big, beautiful’ tax bill was the source of his public feud with billionaire Elon Musk and the potential impact it will have.

Yet Trump could now pressure those same agencies to make Musk’s life difficult. Just some of the regulators Musk’s business empire must deal with include the Federal Communications Commission for his satellite internet service Starlink, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration for Tesla, and the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) for SpaceX.

The FAA, under pressure from Trump, or to curry his favour, could say it’s not going to approve any SpaceX launch permits, says Roger Nober, director of the Regulatory Studies Center, also at George Washington University.

For Tesla, for example, Trump could pressure regulators to deny necessary approvals of its autonomous driving program, or could renew investigations into the safety of its full self-driving software, some analysts told ABC News.

“If full self-driving were to be invalidated, that would be a huge hit to Tesla stock and to Musk,” Gordon Johnson, CEO and founder of the data firm GLJ Research, told ABC.

Although the courts shouldn’t tolerate such actions if they are shown to be vindictive, the president wouldn’t necessarily need a “litigation-proof strategy to really mess up” Musk’s life, Coglianese said.

It could still be “very painful and problematic” for Musk, while courts sorted out the issues, he said.

“And if Musk’s operations get delayed or disrupted, that can mean real money.”

Nober says he believes that any lasting regulatory change against Musk’s companies would be difficult to implement, given his very public spat with Trump and that the president said he’s going to punish his one-time friend.

“If they then initiate regulatory action that’s intended punish any of Musk’s business… it’s going to be vulnerable to challenge on the theory that it was arbitrary,” he said.

However, there may be other minor administrative regulatory roadblocks that government agencies could impose on Musk that would be difficult to challenge in court, Nober says.

“They can make life difficult” for Musk, he said.

On Thursday, amid their war of words, shares of Tesla plunged more than 14 per cent, leaving $150 billion US of the electric automaker’s value erased by the end of trading day.

The plunge was probably because Tesla, like a lot of Musk’s companies, have a lot of little things they deal with, with a lot of regulatory bodies, Nober says.

“Just making those more difficult, or slowing them down, or reviewing them, or taking longer to turn things around, has a cumulative impact,” he said.

What the Trump-Musk breakup may mean for SpaceX and Tesla

toggle caption Brandon Bell/Getty Images

“If I cared about subsidies,” Elon Musk said in 2015, “I would have entered the oil and gas industry.”

Yet the history of Musk’s business empire tells another story.

Musk’s companies have long been fueled by taxpayer money, whether in the form of massive government contracts, low-interest loans, tax breaks and other support that helped make Musk one of the world’s richest people.

Over the past two decades, companies run by Musk have received tens of billions of dollars in federal backing.

One tally, by The Washington Post, found that at least $38 billion in government support has been funneled to Musk’s companies, an estimate that likely undercounts the breadth of support since some defense and intelligence contracts are not publicly available.

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In turn, the U.S. government has become reliant on Musk, from space travel, to national security to the future of green transportation.

So when President Trump on Thursday threatened to end Musk’s government subsidies and contracts in a spiraling feud between the former political allies, it was greeted with some skepticism.

Musk has deep ties to the U.S. space program and intelligence community

Musk’s companies have become inextricably tied to the federal government, particularly SpaceX’s crucial role in the U.S. space program.

The company’s rockets now provide the only way for U.S. astronauts to get to and from the International Space Station.

“While their political partnership appears to be at an end, it is difficult to imagine the government canceling SpaceX contracts anytime soon,” said Dan Grazier, senior fellow and program director at the Stimson Center, a think tank focused on national security.

“It will be some time before any of the company’s competitors will be able to take up the slack, so it looks like the president and the tech mogul will have to find a way to get along,” he said.

It’s unclear if Musk was trolling or being serious, but he responded to Trump’s threats by saying SpaceX will begin decommissioning its Dragon spacecraft, which has been used for years to ferry crews and cargo to the space station.

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In fact, there are now astronauts at the station. They were taken there by a SpaceX capsule.

Walking away from the federal government would strand those crew members and complicate the Trump administration’s goal of landing astronauts on the moon in the coming years.

Later on Thursday, Musk appeared to backtrack, writing on X: “OK, we won’t decommission Dragon.”

SpaceX is also building hundreds of spy satellites for the Pentagon, Reuters reported in March, work that, if abandoned, could have national security implications and prompt a backlash from the intelligence community.

In addition, SpaceX’s Starlink satellite network is a player in a multibillion-dollar federal effort to expand internet access to underserved parts of the country.

Ukraine has also relied heavily on Starlink services since Russia launched a full-scale invasion of the country in 2022, leading top Pentagon officials to coordinate directly with Musk, The New Yorker has reported.

Federal support for Tesla and electric vehicle infrastructure in doubt

Tesla, the biggest electric vehicle company in the U.S. (which also controls the country’s largest charging network), has been a major beneficiary of federal support.

That’s likely to change under the massive congressional reconciliation bill being championed by Trump.

The version of the bill passed by the House would chop consumer tax credits for buying electric vehicles and slash federal funding for charging stations.

While auto industry experts view those cuts as hurting legacy automakers more than Tesla, Trump accused Musk of not supporting the bill because it gutted subsidies for electric vehicles.

toggle caption Andrew Harnik/Getty Images

Musk has previously opposed the EV tax credits, viewing them as mostly benefiting his competitors, but he changed his tune as Tesla’s profits and sales plummeted globally since Musk began overseeing mass layoffs and other shake-ups to the federal government through the cost-cutting unit, the Department of Government Efficiency.

The end of federal programs aimed at growing the EV sector would not damage Tesla as severely as other problems the automaker is confronting, said John Helveston, a professor at George Washington University who studies the electric vehicle industry.

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“Musk hasn’t done Tesla any favors by taking extremely unpopular actions in his time at DOGE, and globally the business is struggling from other decisions, like focusing on the Cybertruck instead of releasing more new practical models that consumers actually want,” he said. “In the European Union, sales are down heavily from the political damage, and sales in China are down from intense competition of very competitive Chinese EVs.”

During the Biden administration, Congress devoted billions of dollars to expand electric vehicle charging stations nationwide. A major pillar of this plan was having Tesla make its chargers compatible with other vehicles, something Tesla agreed to in exchange for a slice of the federal funds. That plan has been halted by the Trump administration, even before Congress tried to pass the Trump-backed tax policy bill that would roll back support for EVs even more.

Jeffrey Sonnenfeld, an associate dean at the Yale School of Management, said further pain for Tesla could eventually plunge Musk’s riches.

“Tesla is hugely reliant on federal largesse for the build-out of EV charging infrastructure, not to mention federal regulatory approval for his continued autonomous driving and robotics experiments,” Sonnenfeld said.

“His wealth is highly precarious,” he said, noting that most of Musk’s fortune is tied to his stake in Tesla. “The reality is that Musk’s position is far weaker than many realize.”

Subsidies or not, Musk will “continue to thrive”

The acrimonious Trump-Musk implosion on Thursday came only months after Trump transformed the driveway of the White House’s South Lawn into a Tesla showroom, and after the White House tapped Starlink to help expand internet across the White House campus.

Both were performative gestures that crystalized the billionaire’s cozy relationship with the president, who was willing to shill for Musk after he dished out more than a quarter-billion dollars to support Trump’s run for president.

So will the Trump-Musk breakup cut the opposite way and inflict pain on Musk’s companies?

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Paul Levinson, a professor at Fordham University, said perhaps it will lead to more short-term stock market drops for Tesla and a hit to his wealth. But even if some of the federal money that flows to Musk’s business empire disappears, it will not likely hamper the billionaire in the long run, he said.

“Musk has ample resources to sustain those losses, reshuffle and rebuild his companies and holdings, and come out ahead and on top,” Levinson said. “Bottom line: if all the Trump government does in its feud with Musk is attack his financial interests, Musk is very likely to not only survive but continue to thrive.”