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(Text/Pan Yuchen, Editor/Gao Xin) The 2024 US presidential election is in full swing. However, Elon Musk, the world's richest man who was once a staunch supporter of the Democratic Party, has gone against his usual practice and voted for former president and current Republican candidate Trump, and is ready to provide more campaign support for the latter.

According to the Wall Street Journal in early July, Musk plans to donate $45 million per month to support Trump's election. Although Musk quickly refuted the rumor as "fake news", he still said that he would set up a "political action committee" to support Trump's campaign.

According to Musk himself, he has only voted for Democrats in the past few years and has no interest in former President Trump. Even before he acquired Twitter, Musk had publicly criticized Trump for "gerontocracy."

However, when the older Biden was elected president, Musk's attitude took a 180-degree turn. He even bluntly stated that the people elected Biden simply because they were tired of Trump.

Deliberate alienation?

According to the Wall Street Journal, the main reason Musk abandoned Biden and voted for Trump was because he was coldly received by the Biden administration. Although this seems puzzling: Biden and Musk are both supporters of electric vehicles, while Trump is just the opposite. He had previously threatened at the Republican National Convention to abolish all electric vehicle policies during the Biden era.

According to people familiar with the matter, in early 2021, the newly inaugurated Biden administration began to formulate plans to implement its campaign promise to promote the development of electric vehicles. Tesla executives contacted the White House several times after Biden's inauguration, hoping that Biden could establish contact with Musk.

However, the opposite happened. Although Biden has strengthened his support for electric vehicles since taking office and has repeatedly invited automakers to participate in electric vehicle-related events, he has never invited Musk to attend.

In August 2021, Biden organized an electric vehicle summit and signed an executive order with the goal of making half of all new cars sold in 2030 zero-emission vehicles. The event invited the three Detroit auto giants in the United States - General Motors, Ford Motor and Chrysler's parent company Stellantis Group. But just before the event, White House officials called Tesla to apologize: Musk was not invited, even though Tesla accounts for two-thirds of electric vehicle sales in the United States.

Biden's statement quickly angered Tesla executives including Musk. Musk immediately sent an email to the media, accusing Biden of deliberately ignoring Tesla every time and spreading the wrong message to the public that "GM is the leader of the electric vehicle industry": "However, the fact is that Tesla produced more than 300,000 electric vehicles last quarter, while GM only produced 26."

Despite this, Musk also expressed his desire to meet with Biden and said he would not embarrass the Biden administration when speaking at the White House, but did not receive a response from the White House.

The union you can't afford to offend

Some analysts believe that the fundamental reason why Biden alienated Musk is that the powerful United Auto Workers (UAW) was his main voting base for the presidency.

Founded in 1935, the UAW has more than 400,000 active members and 580,000 retired members across the United States. It has established more than 600 local unions and signed 1,150 agreements with approximately 1,600 automotive industry employers.

In recent years, the biggest event related to the UAW was the strike organized by it last September. As many as 145,000 workers participated in this historic strike, demanding that the Detroit Big Three increase their wages by 40%. Biden and Trump both went to the strike site to support the UAW workers. After several rounds of negotiations, the Detroit Big Three had to make concessions to the UAW.

Therefore, in the view of some analysts, Biden would rather offend Musk than offend the UAW, which has nearly one million members. Even Musk himself thinks so:

"Most of the Democratic Party is controlled by unions, which have far more influence than environmentalists, especially Biden, who once said, 'The UAW elected me president.'"

However, Musk has nothing to do with the seemingly influential UAW. Tesla is also the only major American automaker that does not have a UAW member. In addition, other new car-making forces such as Lucid and Rivian do not have UAW members, and Biden has not mentioned them.

In Musk's view, the UAW has deviated from its original purpose, and the so-called protection of workers is just an excuse for it to undermine the development of enterprises for its own interests. In November 2021, when the federal government investigated UAW officials for corruption, Musk quickly responded on Twitter: "Fight for the money they stole from the workers!"

It is worth mentioning that the UAW itself was founded in the "Rust Belt" of the United States centered on Detroit, and has close ties with the three giants of GM, Ford and Chrysler. However, Tesla's factory is located in California on the west coast of the United States.

Moreover, since the development of electric vehicles by automakers will cause many traditional auto workers to lose their jobs, and a lot of profits from electric vehicles will flow to upstream raw material companies, harming the interests of traditional automakers, the UAW has always been hostile to the electric vehicle industry.

Therefore, when Biden introduced bills such as the Inflation Reduction Act to support the development of electric vehicles, the UAW immediately threatened that only electric vehicles produced by UAW workers would receive the most subsidies, which invisibly stabbed Musk in the back.

In the view of industry insiders, the tense relationship between Musk and Biden, and between Tesla and UAW is essentially a conflict between traditional automobile companies led by the Detroit Big Three and new car-making forces such as Tesla.

In January 2022, after Biden once again praised GM and Ford's efforts in the electric vehicle industry and once again ignored Tesla, Musk, who had been fed up, commented that Biden treated the American public as fools and had become a manipulated "puppet." He also encouraged fans to launch an online petition, asking Biden to recognize Tesla's leadership in the electric vehicle industry.

Suppression and resistance

In response, Biden administration officials have also tried to repair their relationship with Musk.

After Musk criticized Biden as a "puppet," Brian Deese, then Biden's senior adviser, called Rohan Patel, then Tesla's vice president of global public policy and business development, to express his dissatisfaction with Musk's remarks and asked to communicate with Musk.

Musk then got a chance to talk on the phone with Diess and then-Biden chief of staff Ron Klain, where he directly complained that Biden did not recognize Tesla's leading position in the market. The latter two said they would convey his statement to Biden.

On the other hand, Democrats such as Ro Khanna, a Silicon Valley congressman, have also tried to win back Musk, reminding him that it was former Democratic President Obama's policies that helped Tesla rise and facilitated SpaceX's cooperation with former Defense Secretary Ashton Carter, and that Musk himself often expressed his admiration for Obama.

But even so, Musk's relationship with the Biden administration has not eased. Because in his view, in addition to Tesla, the Biden administration continues to suppress other companies under its control. For example, the US Federal Trade Commission has been investigating whether Musk violated the consent order allowing journalists to access company records after acquiring Twitter; the Department of Justice accused SpaceX of discrimination in the recruitment process; the Federal Communications Commission rejected Starlink's nearly $900 million rural broadband subsidy...

According to people familiar with the matter, Musk believes that the Biden administration's actions are "politically motivated." Although the Federal Trade Commission, the Department of Justice and other departments have denied or refused to comment.

However, the Wall Street Journal also emphasized that although Musk's relationship with the Biden administration has reached a freezing point, his company still benefited during Biden's administration, such as the promotion of electric vehicles by the Inflation Reduction Act. SpaceX also received a contract of about $4 billion from NASA during Biden's tenure to develop a manned lunar lander; and between 2021 and 2023, the number of launches approved by SpaceX from the Federal Aviation Administration also tripled...

On the other hand, as Twitter was acquired by Musk and renamed X, he became more enthusiastic about participating in discussions on politics and public affairs, and frequently sang against Biden, criticizing the latter's policies ranging from epidemic prevention, immigration to economy.

At the same time, according to some people close to Musk, as Musk's wealth continues to soar and he has become the world's richest man, he has become more and more the target of criticism from the American left, which has also alienated him from the Democratic Party. In particular, Musk often argues with other politicians on Twitter about issues such as the Biden administration's possible imposition of wealth taxes on the rich and regulation of large technology companies.

At the same time, Musk also relaxed the speech restrictions on many conservatives on Twitter. Not long ago, Musk also used his own son as an example to severely condemn the transgender behavior of minors and vowed to destroy the so-called "woke virus."

Sympathy

In this context, although Trump threatened to abolish the electric vehicle policy after taking office, Musk chose to support the former without hesitation.

In a recent podcast, Musk said that the Republican Party is not perfect, but now it is more in line with his views on meritocracy and personal freedom. Therefore, he set up a "political action committee" and used funds for canvassing and field actions to support Trump. Musk also said that he is not a member of the "Make America Great Again" (MAGA) movement, but he agrees with similar principles: "Make America Great Again."

Despite being criticized by Musk for "gerontocracy," Trump said in 2022 on Truth Social, a social platform he founded, that Musk had tried to lobby him on behalf of Tesla during his presidency: "I could have said (to Musk) 'get down on your knees and beg me,' and he would have done it," Trump wrote.

However, after Musk publicly announced his support for him, Trump quickly reciprocated.

At a rally in Michigan on July 20, Trump told the crowd: "I like Elon Musk. Elon announced his support for me a few days ago. He is great." Trump also said that Musk is a "smart man" and that he has always maintained a good relationship with him. He also said that he has not asked to change his position on canceling the electric vehicle policy. After all, as one of the only two electric vehicle companies with stable profits, Tesla's size has long exceeded the level of needing to rely on subsidies to survive.

In addition, Musk and Trump have a sense of sympathy during Biden's presidency. For example, Musk was harassed by the government during the acquisition of Twitter, and Trump was previously banned from Twitter. Musk also said he would unblock Trump's account after acquiring Twitter, but was rejected by the latter.

"He was really crushed when Elon bought Twitter, and the same thing happened to Trump and other conservatives." Trevor Traina, who served as the U.S. ambassador to Austria during Trump's tenure, said it was the "hardship caused by left-wing revenge" that brought the two together.

However, according to a recent poll by Reuters and Ipsos, Harris, the Democratic candidate who will succeed Biden, once led Trump by 2 percentage points. Therefore, whether the prospects of the US political situation and the automotive industry will develop in the direction that Musk expects remains a huge question mark.

This article is an exclusive article of Observer.com and may not be reproduced without authorization.