A New American Golden Age? The Impact of Billionaires on Economic Policy Under Trump II

During his hearing before the United States Senate, Scott Bessent, the US Treasury Secretary, declared that the United States was on the verge of a “new golden age.” This expression echoes the “Gilded Age” (1870–1890), marked by the accumulation of capital by a minority of industrialists and the emergence of major oligopolies in the hydrocarbons sector (Standard Oil), banking (J.P. Morgan & Co.), aluminium (Alcoa), and telecommunications (AT&T). These conglomerates were dominated by figures such as J.P. Morgan or John D. Rockefeller, who were labelled “robber barons” due to numerous abuses of power and financial practices that paid little heed to ethical codes.

In a country where success is correlated with the concentration of wealth, businessmen have historically exercised major influence over the political sphere, exploiting institutional mechanisms such as lobbying and campaign financing. The arrival of Elon Musk in the new Trump administration marks a significant shift, accelerating the possibility of the “conversion of wealth into political power” (Jeffrey Winters, 2011) and thus enabling an economic elite to access power.
Is Elon Musk’s alignment with Donald Trump merely a short-term convergence of interests, or does it reflect a deeper strategy aimed at reshaping the United States and its role on the global stage?

A project with a totalising vision

The arrival of Elon Musk in Donald Trump’s administration marks a turning point and illustrates more than ever the rapprochement of politics and economics, as theorised at the Lipp colloquium in 1939. His fortune allows him to finance an economic and political project of unprecedented scale. Unlike other figures in American capitalism, such as the Koch brothers, Elon Musk channels his fortune – estimated at around 430 billion dollars in December 2024 – in support of an economic vision, a political project, and an anthropological conception that seek to be systemic. While he shares, with the Koch brothers, a libertarian outlook, his project far exceeds classical economic considerations: the Muskian vision is based on a techno-utopian transhumanism marked by the transcendence of biological and terrestrial limits. Elon Musk stated in Full Send Podcast that “the greatest threat to humanity is the collapse of the global fertility rate.” The billionaire then multiplied statements about the necessity of making life multiplanetary, explaining in April 2024: “We must colonise Mars while civilisation is still strong.” His company SpaceX is actively working on this project with the development of the Starship spacecraft.

By financing Donald Trump’s campaign to the tune of more than 118 million dollars, Elon Musk has, on the one hand, ensured the Republican’s victory and, on the other, secured the possibility of implementing his “totalising” project. In this context, his numerous companies appear as a genuine ecosystem ranging from the microscopic (with Neuralink) to the macroscopic (via Starlink or SpaceX) in service of a civilisational vision. At the heart of this integrated ecosystem, data stands as a strategic resource, acting as a fundamental “raw material.” A central pillar of the Muskian project, data fuels the various sectors in which Musk’s companies operate: aerospace (SpaceX, Starlink), artificial intelligence (xAI, Grok), autonomous automobiles (Tesla), transport infrastructure (The Boring Company, Hyperloop), and biotechnology (Neuralink). The acquisition of Twitter (now X) in 2022 was not merely a media positioning move, akin to Jeff Bezos’s ownership of The Washington Post. Instead, it fits into a broader logic of data capture and exploitation, essential for the development of his artificial intelligence Grok, integrated into X. At the same time, Tesla’s autonomous vehicles collect billions of kilometres of data on human driving every day, while Neuralink aims to merge human and machine through brain-computer interfaces.

To materialise his project of “totalising” dimension, Elon Musk transposes into politics the strategies he has tested in the business world: disrupt to monopolise. This modus operandi is based on a challenge to established institutional frameworks, allowing him to impose his own solutions, often outside traditional regulatory circuits. The intervention of Starlink in the Russia-Ukraine conflict perfectly illustrates this logic. By providing satellite Internet access to Ukrainian forces in the early weeks of the Russian invasion, Elon Musk filled a void left by international bodies and failing state infrastructures. However, the temporary suspension of Starlink access in certain sensitive areas – notably in Crimea – revealed the extent of Elon Musk’s discretionary power in a domain as strategic as digital warfare. According to a 2023 Pentagon Oversight Committee report, this situation raises a crucial issue: the privatisation of infrastructure essential to national sovereignty and the conduct of modern conflicts.

Beyond armed conflicts, Elon Musk’s influence also extends to the economic infrastructure of states. In Mayotte, the introduction of Starlink has weakened the position of historic operators such as Orange and SFR, reshaping local economic balances. This pattern of replacing national actors resembles a form of economic disruption where the absence of strict regulation allows private companies to displace traditional actors under the guise of innovation. This strategy finds an echo in the geopolitical dynamics of the Sahel. In Niger, following the coup d’état of 2023, Elon Musk suggested on X that his infrastructures could be used to bypass restrictions imposed by ECOWAS. Although this statement remained at the level of intention, it reflects an interventionist vision where technological entrepreneurship becomes a lever of geopolitical influence.

Elon Musk does not merely exploit the loopholes in the international system; he reconfigures power relations to his advantage. His companies are no longer merely economic entities but central actors in international relations, directly influencing states’ strategic choices. This privatisation of power, which largely escapes democratic control mechanisms, poses a major challenge for governments and multilateral institutions. The model proposed by Elon Musk, though still in its infancy, could prefigure – provided his alliance with Donald Trump endures – a new era in which a small handful of technology companies negotiate on equal footing with states.

Turning the state into a corporation: the risks of state capture

Elon Musk’s entry into the Department of Governmental Efficiency (DOGE), an acronym that directly references the namesake cryptocurrency (Dogecoin), raises growing concerns, particularly regarding potential conflicts of interest and the concentration of economic and political power in the hands of a small number of individuals. This appointment illustrates the broader phenomenon of the increasing influence of large technology firms on public policies, which has fuelled criticisms of the erosion of democratic principles and the risk of state capture.

One of the major challenges of Donald Trump’s next term is the management of US debt. In 2023, US federal spending exceeded 6 trillion dollars, while revenue reached only 4.5 trillion dollars, creating a budget deficit of 1.5 trillion dollars. This situation worsened under Joe Biden’s presidency, with public debt rising significantly, from 28 trillion dollars to 34.5 trillion dollars between 2021 and 2024. The International Monetary Fund (IMF) forecasts that US public debt will reach 121% of GDP by the end of 2024, exposing the country to new medium-term economic vulnerabilities (IMF, 2024).

In this context, Elon Musk’s critique of the country’s financial management provides him with an opportunity to establish “a state under market surveillance rather than a market under state surveillance” (Foucault), by reducing the size and influence of the state in favour of large corporations.Indeed, Elon Musk aims to leverage the outsourcing mechanisms of strategic state functions for his companies, particularly in the areas of defense and space exploration. Previously, SpaceX, founded by Elon Musk, signed a contract with NASA in 2008 to provide space transportation services valued at $15 billion. By July 2024, this contract had increased to $69 billion. This situation illustrates a growing trend of entrusting private companies with increasingly strategic and sensitive missions, a dynamic that can be perceived as a form of deregulation or privatization of the sovereign functions of the state. Outsourcing such missions to companies like SpaceX, which offers innovative solutions at lower costs than traditional actors such as Boeing or Lockheed Martin, has implications for efficiency but also raises questions of control and responsibility.

For Elon Musk, efficiency is not just about reducing public expenditure or the time savings that might result from it: it becomes a lever for him to redefine the relationships between technology, society, and power, while consolidating the position of his enterprise galaxy in the global race for innovation. Musk’s policy of efficiency appears as a necessary step in the realization of his civilizational project. In this context, the resignations of Vivek Ramaswamy and, more recently, about twenty American officials who joined the staff of DOGE prompt the reflection: “We will not use our technical skills to weaken the state apparatus.”

The radical nature of Elon Musk’s project: the alignment of Silicon Valley

Of unprecedented scale, Elon Musk’s project also raises concerns due to its radical nature – a radicalism stemming both from the totalising nature of his project and from his methods imported from the business world. Unlike previous electoral cycles, where Silicon Valley was perceived as a Democratic stronghold, Elon Musk’s influence is contrbuting to a shift, for some pragmatic, for others ideological, towards the conservative camp.

The growing distrust of the regulatory state and the expansion of transnational economic models facilitate an alliance between Donald Trump and certain tech entrepreneurs keen to maintain regulatory autonomy. While diversity and inclusion remain key elements in attracting a young and talented workforce, some executives, such as Mark Zuckerberg, see in the masculinist and libertarian approach of the Republican camp a way to free themselves from the constraints imposed by Democrats under Biden’s presidency. Meta and Amazon, in fact, did not wait for Donald Trump’s inauguration to put a stop to their diversity programmes. Mark Zuckerberg’s firm, which had contributed one million dollars to Donald Trump’s inauguration fund, announced the elimination of its Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) programmes in recruitment, training, and supplier selection processes. The company also ended its fact-checking programme in the United States and appointed conservative figures to key positions, including Joel Kaplan[1] and Dana White. As for Jeff Bezos’s firm, it has followed a similar trend, scrapping its representation and inclusion programmes in January 2025.

The alignment with Elon Musk can also be interpreted as a pragmatic response to the potential risk of being disrupted. The shift towards the Republican camp can be explained, among other factors, by Elon Musk’s dominant position and disruptive power in the tech sector. Musk has demonstrated his ability to upend entire industries — space exploration with SpaceX, and the automotive sector with Tesla. His threat to boycott Apple after the Cupertino firm chose to collaborate with OpenAI rather than adopt Musk’s AI solutions illustrates this power dynamic. His position in government could further exacerbate competition regulation issues. His ability to influence public policy, particularly by directing resources towards his technological projects (space, artificial intelligence), raises the question of potential conflicts of interest. This concern had already been highlighted in April 2021 when NASA awarded SpaceX, over Blue Origin, a $2.9 billion contract to develop a lunar lander, sparking accusations of favouritism and disputes from competitors. [1]

Deliberately vague objectives

The rapprochement between political and economic elites, once discreet, has become ostentatious in the Trump-Musk era. The South African billionaire marks a break by assuming a visible and disruptive political role, despite never having been elected, through his control of Twitter (now X) and his position within the Trump administration. Although Musk dominates the media landscape and social networks, his overall project remains difficult to grasp in its entirety. Unlike others who have set out their visions in manifestos or political essays, the founder of Tesla is careful not to reveal the ultimate aim of his project, instead employing a communication strategy similar to Donald Trump’s, using announcements on his social platform to shape narratives while limiting deeper analysis. Many comment on his tweets, but few take a step back to consider the bigger picture.

It seems necessary to view Musk’s growing influence as an interconnected mechanism, with each piece falling into place as his project takes shape. This communication strategy allows him to avoid suspicion from potential opponents. Musk’s long-term vision extends far beyond mere influence within the US administration. It appears to be aimed at the systemic integration of his companies under a single entity, as evidenced by the creation of United States of America Inc. While Musk has not publicly disclosed the precise intentions behind this structure, several clues suggest a hypothesis. United States of America Inc. has been cited as the managing entity of Group America LLC, an organisation in which Musk is not explicitly listed as an owner but which shares the same postal address as several of his businesses, including Musk Ventures and various LLCs linked to his activities. This structure is intriguing, as it could serve as a legal vehicle to consolidate his industrial and technological empire, offering him greater financial and regulatory flexibility.