Something to look forward to in 2025 is the potential clash of two of the world’s biggest egos.
These are owned by a reborn president-elect Donald Trump and his best new pal and government efficiency tsar Elon Musk.
If Musk were to achieve his goal of slashing $2trillion (£1.6trillion) from US government spending, by using ruthless tactics deployed at Twitter, now X, he could become as much of a hero to conservative, smaller state Americans as to those who follow his technology exploits.
Governments across the globe need to recognise that keeping Musk on side is as vital as seeking to blunt Trump’s tariff agenda. Labour is not off to a brilliant start when it comes to courting Musk as an entrepreneur or political influencer.
A failure to issue Musk an invitation to September’s City-based investment summit, attended by the good and the great from across the Atlantic, was not a clever move by a growth-driven Keir Starmer government.
Elon Musk: A failure to invite him to September’s City-based investment summit was not a clever move
Indeed, earlier this week Musk, the world’s richest and possibly most tech savvy person, asserted that ‘very few’ businesses want to invest in Britain under the current Starmer administration.
He previously has accused the Government of going ‘full Stalin’ with its attacks on inheritance.
Certainly, the chance of Britain becoming a home for a Tesla gigafactory in Scotland don’t look good.
It is Labour’s misfortune that it aligned itself so closely with incumbent president Joe Biden’s economics.
Chancellor Rachel Reeves trumpeted that ‘securonomics’ was based around the idea that if Britain threw money at the climate change manufacturing revolution, the nation would be less dependent on fossil fuel markets.
Musk is going to be a force in a climate change-sceptical White House, even if through Tesla he has done more to normalise the idea of electric vehicles than anyone else on the planet.
As a regular visitor to Austin – where one of my sons lives and works – it is impossible not to recognise the impact that Musk can have on economic prospects.
A hike in the hills above the Colorado River, which runs through the Texas state capital, reveals Musk’s Tuscan-style 14,400 square foot mansion, below.
The billionaire’s family campus, which The New York Times reports houses three homes and 11 children, is just the tip of his investment iceberg. Tesla headquarters and tens of thousands of colleagues have been transferred to Austin.
Musk’s arrival in the region has sped up development in America’s fastest growing city.
Once a cattleman’s town, known for its country music, TexMex food, arts, low-rise buildings and many neon signs, it is being transformed.
A high-rise core is being encircled by motorways and apartment blocks, offices, and upmarket hostelries.
In the Texas Hill country next to Austin, where the late president Lyndon Johnson lived, there is also evidence of a Musk takeover.
The small town of Bastrop, known for country festivals and craft brewing, is at the core of another enterprise. Musk is buying up agricultural land on the fringes of the town ready to construct a new home for The Boring Company.
Musk developed the idea of a company that tunnels under cities while sitting in a Los Angeles traffic jam in 2016.
The $7.5bn (£6bn) plus enterprise is reimagining public transport in the US. Among the projects under way is the 29-mile Vegas Loop Tunnel connecting 51 stations between Las Vegas and Los Angeles.
Also being planned is the Hyperloop, which would see people travel between destinations in autonomous electric pods at high speeds. Maybe the Boring Company could be tapped to resolve the problems of HS2?
Musk’s other great success story, beyond $1.3trillion Tesla, is SpaceX. Its Starlink constellation, with some 7,000 small satellites, provides much of the intelligence for the Pentagon on the Ukraine-Russia war.
It is also developing a new satellite-based commercial and consumer mobile phone network for Ukraine. Musk is a rascal who has an ability to latch on to and transform new technologies into booming enterprises.
He is a global investor who can transform national and regional economies. His political and social views may be objectionable.
But to alienate this raw capitalist as an inward investor would be an act of self-harm.
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