Top Republican Tom Cotton slams Elon Musk for 'shameful supplication' to China

In a rare act, Republican Senator Tom Cotton has slammed Elon Musk for supplication to the Communist Party of China (CPC).

Musk, the richest person in the world, has emerged as the principal financier and ally of US President Donald Trump. As the head of the Department of Government Efficiency (Doge), he has emerged as the vastly powerful with complete access to the entire federal government’s funds. He is the driving force behind dismantling career officers in the federal government, shutting down US AID, and purging the government of non-partisan officials.

In his upcoming book ‘Seven Things You Can’t Say About China’, Cotton has slammed Musk for “chasing Chinese dollars” and having “shamefully supplicated China’s Communist rulers” in order to advance his own interests at Tesla and SpaceX, according to The Guardian.

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For a long time, Musk has been friendly to China and its leaders. Musk has a Tesla factory in China. For his business interests in China and his closeness to Chinese leaders, including President Xi Jinping, Musk has long been seen as a lobbyist of China in the United States. Such lobbying appears to be working as the Donald Trump administration is much friendly to China than it is to longstanding US allies and partners.

While Trump has threatened to invade ally Norway, make Canada as the 51st US state, and get into trade conflicts with Canada and Mexico with 25 per cent tariffs, Trump just imposed 10 per cent tariff on China and saved TikTok, the Chinese app widely condemned for peddling anti-US propaganda in the United States and indoctrinating users into becoming supporters of China.

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Cotton, a foreign policy hawk critical of China, was a rare Republican voice in his criticism of Trump’s stand on TikTok.

In the book, whose advance copy Guardian has obtained, Cotton disapprovingly quoted Musk as saying in 2021 that he was “very confident about Tesla’s future in China” and “very confident that [the] future of China is gonna be great”.

Cotton clubbed Musk among US business leaders whom he dubbed “tech titans” and accused them of “Chasing Chinese dollars” whom he says “have … shamefully supplicated China’s Communist rulers”, according to the newspaper.

“Microsoft founder Bill Gates praised China’s dictator, saying that ‘I am impressed [with] how hard President Xi works … he’s quite amazing.’ Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg bought copies of Xi’s book The Governance of China and gave them to his employees because ‘I want them to understand socialism with Chinese characteristics’,” wrote Cotton in the book.

As for Musk, Cotton wrote, “Elon Musk told China’s state television, ‘I’m very confident that the future of China is going to be great and that China is headed towards being the biggest economy in the world and a lot of prosperity in the future.’”

Cotton’s criticism is rare as even though the Congress is an independent branch of the US government, and Congress members have often criticised their own party’s administration for decades, the Republican Party currently is completely subservient to Trump. As the Republican Party controls both the houses of Congress, the Congress has been reduced to a rubber-stamp body that has no effective power to put checks on Trump’s executive powers.