Indian-origin Tesla CFO Vaibhav Taneja appointed treasurer of Elon Musk’s America Party

Indian-American Vaibhav Taneja, currently the Chief Financial Officer (CFO) at Tesla, has been named as the Treasurer and Custodian of Records for Elon Musk’s newly launched political venture, the America Party.

Musk, an ex-ally of US President Donald Trump, said Saturday he had launched a new political party in the United States to challenge what the tech billionaire described as the country’s “one-party system."

The world’s richest person and Trump’s biggest political donor in the 2024 election had a bitter falling out with the president after leading the Republican’s effort to slash spending and cut federal jobs as head of the so-called Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE).

Musk has clashed with Trump over the president’s massive domestic spending plan, saying it would explode the US debt, and vowed to do everything in his power to defeat lawmakers who voted for it.

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Now he has created the so-called America Party, his own political framework, through which to try and achieve that.

“When it comes to bankrupting our country with waste & graft, we live in a one-party system, not a democracy,” the Space X and Tesla boss posted on X, the social media platform that he owns.

“Today, the America Party is formed to give you back your freedom."

Taneja’s official role in Musk’s political outfit was confirmed through paperwork submitted to the US Federal Election Commission (FEC), which lists him as both Treasurer and Custodian of Records of the party.

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It is not clear how much impact the new party would have on the 2026 mid-term elections, or on the presidential vote two years after that.

The Trump-Musk feud reignited in dramatic fashion late last month as Trump pushed Republicans in Congress to ram through his massive domestic agenda in the form of the One Big Beautiful Bill.

Musk expressed fierce opposition to the legislation, and ruthlessly attacked its Republican backers for supporting “debt slavery."

Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent, who clashed with Musk while he ran DOGE, said on CNN’s “State of the Union” on Sunday that DOGE’s “principles” were popular but “if you look at the polling, Elon was not.”

“I imagine that those board of directors did not like this announcement yesterday and will be encouraging him to focus on his business activities, not his political activities,” he said.

With inputs from agencies