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Musk disengages from Trump on tariffs and quotes Milton Friedman: ‘The magic of the free market’

After opening up to a free trade zone with Europe, Tesla founder relaunches a video of the Nobel Prize-winning economist to defend the global market

After expressing his support for a ‘zero tariffs zone in the future’ between the US and Europe, Elon Musk is once again distancing himself from President Donald Trump’s protectionist line. He does so through a video re-released on his X profile, in which Nobel Prize winner Milton Friedman simply explains the power of the free market using the example of a pencil.

In the famous speech, Friedman emphasises that ‘there is not a single person in the world who can produce this pencil’, describing each component as the result of a global supply chain: from wood from Washington State to graphite from South America to rubber from Malaysia. Each material, each process, is the result of the spontaneous cooperation of thousands of people, with no central direction.

‘The magic of the price system’, Friedman explains, is what allows people with different cultures, languages and religions to work together without knowing each other, united only by the economic incentive. It is a message that Musk wanted to revive precisely at a time when Trump is defending a policy of generalised tariffs that has already generated great turbulence in the markets and among trade allies.

The Tesla and SpaceX founder emphasised at the weekend, in a video link-up with the League Congress, that he was confident about a future agreement between Washington and Brussels. A hope that is a clear departure from the current approach of the White House, which has already pushed Europe to consider countermeasures and to propose a ‘zero tariffs’ pact for industrial goods.

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