Trump live: Musk to ‘significantly’ step back from DOGE after Tesla profits plunge

Elon Musk will ”significantly” cut back his time working for the Trump administration from next month to spend more time running his companies as Tesla profits fell.

Since Donald Trump’s inauguration the Billionaire Tesla boss led the controversial Department of Government Efficiency, which has aggressively cut costs across the federal government, sparking public backlash.

Musk told investors on a conference call following Tesla’s results that he would likely cut back his work for Trump to one or two days a week, saying the “large slog of work” to get the DOGE team up and running was mostly complete.

“Starting next month, I'll be allocating far more of my time to Tesla,” he said.

A key reason for his pivot away from finding public service savings to focus on his businesses is that Tesla profits plunged in the first quarter of the year, with revenue falling to its lowest level since the third quarter of 2021.

The shift from Musk comes as dozens of finance ministers and trade representatives have descended on Washington in the hopes of securing trade deals with the president, after he introduced sweeping tariffs on most trading partners earlier this month.