Vivek Ramaswamy, the co-chair of the proposed Department of Government Efficiency alongside billionaire Elon Musk, has a lengthy history of attacking his partner’s ties to China, frequently referring to Musk as a “circus monkey” and a puppet for the Chinese Communist Party.
Ramaswamy’s critiques, reviewed by CNN’s KFile, include pointed remarks about Musk’s 2022 suggestion that Taiwan should become a special administrative region of China, a stance aligned with Beijing’s interests and one that drew praise from Chinese officials.
Tesla’s investments in the Chinese market and Musk’s comment on Taiwan have drawn fierce criticism from Ramaswamy, who argued the Tesla CEO was pandering to the Chinese Communist Party for business benefits, such as regulatory approvals and tax breaks.
“I think Tesla is increasingly beholden to China,” Ramaswamy said in May 2023 when discussing the carmaker’s decision to build a battery plant in Shanghai.
“I have no reason to think Elon won’t jump like a circus monkey when Xi Jinping calls in the hour of need,” Ramaswamy added, referring to the general secretary of the Chinese Communist Party and president of China.
Tesla is deeply reliant on China, with deliveries from its Shanghai facility accounting for more than half its global sales in 2023.
In their collaboration within the Department of Governmental Efficiency, or DOGE, Musk and Ramaswamy share a goal of cutting federal regulations and reducing the federal workforce. But Musk’s role as the leader of companies with lucrative government contracts has sparked concerns about his potential conflicts of interest.
Ramaswamy’s own words could be used by critics to question Musk’s role as a government cost-cutter, given how much his own companies have benefited over the years from billions of dollars in government contracts and assistance.
“Both Tesla and SpaceX quite likely would not exist as successful businesses if it were not for the use of public funding, either through subsidies, through the electric car industry, or through actual government contracting in the case of SpaceX,” Ramaswamy said in 2022 on a Fox News podcast.
Though Musk, the world’s richest man, and Ramaswamy, himself a millionaire, are both seen as friends of Big Tech, the two have divergent views when it comes to China. While Musk has recently favored closer ties, Ramaswamy has called for an economic decoupling from China.
As a presidential candidate in the 2024 GOP primary, Ramaswamy was often critical of US economic ties to China. While he claimed other companies such as Apple and Black Rock were enabling and making political concessions to China, he often singled out Musk for some of his harshest criticism.
“Elon Musk has, I think, demonstrated his willingness to change his political tunes based on the favors that he gets to be able to do business in China,” Ramaswamy added on the 2022 Fox News podcast.
Examining potential for DOGE partnership
CNN’s KFile reviewed Ramaswamy’s comments on Musk when looking into how the two might operate DOGE, the nongovernmental entity. Trump proposed creating a government efficiency commission as part of his economic plans unveiled in September, claiming it could save trillions by eliminating fraud and improper payments within six months.
Trump’s statement last month announcing the creation of DOGE quoted Musk as saying that “this will send shockwaves through the system, and anyone involved in Government waste, which is a lot of people!” Ramaswamy separately responded on X with a slogan he often used during his presidential campaign to call for the elimination of federal agencies, writing: “SHUT IT DOWN.”
But Ramaswamy’s sharp critiques of Musk’s ties to China, all made within the last two years, have received little attention. Given how persistently he criticized Musk, the comments raise questions over how the two intend to work together.
Musk, through a spokesperson, declined to comment.
Ramaswamy said his past attacks on Musk came before they had ever met.
“We aired some of these issues the first time we spoke,” he said in a statement. Along with crediting Musk for taking “extraordinary risks against his financial interests,” Ramaswamy told CNN the two know each other well now. “I love him and respect the hell out of him, and I’m proud to call him a friend. The only country he puts first is the same one I do: the United States of America.”
A lengthy history of attacks on Musk
On a number of occasions, Ramaswamy pointed to Musk’s Taiwan comments as an example of tailoring his political positions to appease the Chinese government, drawing a direct connection between Musk’s comments and Tesla’s business benefits.
“He got a nice ‘attaboy’ on the back, a little pat on the back when his Shanghai factory and regulator in China gave him a nice little tax break within days after him having made that comment about Taiwan,” Ramaswamy said in another interview in 2022.
Musk reportedly told Chinese Foreign Minister Qin Gang in May 2023 that Tesla was against the notion of decoupling, instead referring to the interests of the US and China as “intertwined like conjoined twins.”
Ramaswamy criticized Musk’s comment in multiple posts on X.
In one lengthy post targeting Musk in May 2023 he wrote, “the U.S. needs leaders who aren’t in China’s pocket.”
“Now the crusader for ‘free speech’ (@elonmusk) kisses the ring of the world’s biggest censor: Xi Jinping,” he wrote in another June 2023 tweet.
Ramaswamy echoed those comments multiple times in 2023 and 2022.
“I do think it is a kinship that Tim Cook and Elon Musk probably have, is that they both bend the knee to the true overlord, which is Xi Jinping,” said Ramaswamy in 2022, mentioning Cook, Apple’s CEO.
“This is what China’s recognized, is that US companies will jump; if Xi Jinping says ‘jump,’ they’ll say, ‘How high?’” he said in another comment mentioning Musk in June 2023 on Fox News.
In a July 2023 interview, Ramaswamy also labeled US companies’ dependence on China a “great threat” to the US and argued Musk’s push to advance electric vehicle manufacturing has made America less competitive on fossil fuel production.
“And by the way, all this is for an electric vehicle movement that is about actually – in part – subsidizing a form of behavior in the United States that leaves the US less competitive when it comes to fossil fuel production, as well as fossil fuel utilization. And by the way, constraints that don’t apply in China in the same way,” he said in May 2023 on his podcast.
Despite recent subsidies to lower the cost of electric vehicles, the US remains the world leader in fossil fuel production, pumping a record 13.4 million barrels of crude oil a day this year.
