Elon Musk, CEO of Tesla Inc., in the Oval Office of the White House in Washington, D.C., on Feb. 11, 2025.
Aaron Schwartz | Bloomberg | Getty Images
Tesla CEO Elon Musk began his company’s earnings call on Tuesday by saying that his time spent running President Donald Trump’s Department of Government Efficiency will drop “significantly” starting in May.
Musk, who has watched Tesla’s stock tumble by more than 40% this year, said he’ll continue to support the president with DOGE “to make sure that the waste and fraud that we stop does not come roaring back.”
After spending almost $300 million in the 2024 campaign to help return Trump to the White House, Musk created DOGE and joined the administration with a mission to drastically reduce the size and capability of the federal government.
He said he’ll continue to spend a “day or two per week” on government issues “for as long as the president would like me to do so.”
Musk’s commentary came after his company reported disappointing first-quarter results, including a 20% year-over-year slump in automotive revenue and 71% plunge in net income.
In addition to challenges the company already faced, such as competition out of China and an aging fleet of electric vehicles, Tesla has recently been hit with protests in the U.S. and Europe and brand damage due to Musk’s ties to Trump and his support of Germany’s far-right AfD party.
“The protests that you’ll see out there, they’re very organized,” Musk said on Tuesday’s call. He claimed, without evidence, that some people are likely protesting “because they’re receiving fraudulent money” or are “recipients of wasteful largesse.”
On its website, which was last updated on Sunday, DOGE says its cuts have led to an estimated $160 billion in savings. However, Musk’s estimates of savings have been challenged, and DOGE has deleted some of the largest purported savings.
Over that same stretch, Tesla has lost roughly $600 billion in market cap.
DOGE has also made cuts at agencies charged with oversight of his companies. They include the SEC, Federal Aviation Administration and National Highway Traffic Safety Administration.
The White House said in early February that Musk was serving as a “special government employee,” a designation with fewer requirements when it comes to conflict-of-interest disclosures and ethics policies.
The Department of Justice says the title is for anyone expected to work for the government for 130 days or less in a year. The Trump administration will hit its 130th day at the end of May.
Job cuts from DOGE’s work have come from across the government, at agencies including the Internal Revenue Service, National Park Service, Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, and the departments of Agriculture, Education, Energy, Health and Human Services, Homeland Security, and Veterans Affairs, according to the Associated Press.
As of February, staffers from DOGE had pushed top-ranking officials at the Department of Education out of their offices, rearranged the furniture and set up white noise machines to muffle their voices, according to employees at the agency. U.S. senators expressed concern that DOGE had possibly gained access to federal student loan data on tens of millions of borrowers.
Also in February, the Trump administration said that USAID would shut down as an independent agency and be moved under the State Department.
The Blue Ghost Mission Operations Engineer, Jaxon Liebeck, showcases the Blue Ghost moon lander at Firefly Aerospace headquarters on Tuesday, Dec. 3, 2024 in Cedar Park.
Firefly Aerospacepriced shares in its IPO at $45 on Wednesday, above its expected range.
The Texas-based rocket maker will debut on the Nasdaq Thursday under the ticker symbol “FLY.” The offering raised $868 million and values the company at about $6.3 billion.
Firefly filed its initial prospectus in July and upped its IPO range this week to $41 to $43 a share, from an initial range of $35 to $39.
The broader IPO landscape has also seen major public debuts this year from Figma, CoreWeave and Circle as the market for public offerings reopens following a prolonged drought.
U.S. President Donald Trump speaks during an event with Apple CEO Tim Cook in the Oval Office of the White House on August 6, 2025 in Washington, DC.
Win Mcnamee | Getty Images
President Donald Trump said Wednesday he will impose a 100% tariff on imports of semiconductors and chips, but not for companies that are “building in the United States.”
The announcement of new sector-specific tariffs shows Trump ratcheting up his efforts to pressure businesses to manufacture their products in the U.S.
But specifics about the plan, such as how much U.S. manufacturing a company needs to do in order to qualify for the tariff exemption, were not immediately clear.
“We’re going to be putting a very large tariff on chips and semiconductors,” Trump said in the Oval Office on Wednesday afternoon.
“But the good news for companies like Apple is if you’re building in the United States or have committed to build, without question, committed to build in the United States, there will be no charge,” he said.
“So in other words, we’ll be putting a tariff on of approximately 100% on chips and semiconductors. But if you’re building in the United States of America, there’s no charge.”
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Trump had previously signaled that the duties on chips and semiconductors, which have become key components in virtually every industry, could come as soon as next week.
The remarks came after Trump touted a commitment by Apple to invest another $100 billion in the U.S. over the next four years, on top of the $500 billion the tech giant has previously pledged.
Several top chipmakers, including Taiwan Semiconductor, Nvidia and GlobalFoundries, have already pledged to manufacture some of their products in the U.S.
They’re not alone: More than 130 projects in the U.S. totaling $600 billion dollars have been announced since 2020, according to the Semiconductor Industry Association.
TSMC, the world’s largest contract chip company, has pledged to invest a total of $165 billion in U.S. manufacturing.
Nvidia, the world’s most valuable company, said in April that it plans to spend $500 billion on AI infrastructure in the U.S. over the next four years.
GlobalFoundries pledged $16 billion in June to expand its semiconductor manufacturing at facilities in New York and Vermont.
Also in June, Texas Instruments announced a $60 billion boost to seven chip fabs in the U.S. The company counts Apple, Ford, Medtronic, Nvidia and SpaceX as customers.
U.S. President Donald Trump speaks as Apple CEO Tim Cook gestures, as they present Apple’s announcement of a $100 billion investment in U.S. manufacturing, while U.S. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent and Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick stand in the Oval Office at the White House in Washington, D.C., U.S., August 6, 2025.
Jonathan Ernst | Reuters
Apple CEO Tim Cook and President Donald Trump on Wednesday announced that the iPhone maker will spend an additional $100 billion on U.S. companies and suppliers over the next four years.
The company said its investment would incentivize overseas companies to buy more U.S.-made parts. The commitment is on top of a $500 billion announcement that Apple made in February.
“This is the largest investment Apple has ever made in America and anywhere else,” Trump said. “As you know, Apple has been an investor in other countries a little bit, I won’t say which ones, but a couple, and they’re coming home.”
Trump said that he expects new U.S. factories to be built soon based on his policies.
“There are a lot of factories and a lot of plants that are either under construction or soon we’ll be starting construction,” Trump said. “So can’t tell you exactly when, but I want to be around a year from now.”
The company said it would spend $2.5 billion to fund a major expansion with Corning, which makes glass for iPhones in Kentucky. Apple said that all glass for iPhones and Apple Watches will be manufactured in the U.S. at Corning’s facility.
A gift given by Apple CEO Tim Cook to U.S. President Donald Trump stands on President Trump’s table, as they present Apple’s announcement of a $100 billion investment in U.S. manufacturing, in the Oval Office at the White House in Washington, D.C., U.S., August 6, 2025.
Jonathan Ernst | Reuters
At the White House, Cook presented Trump with a souvenir based on Corning’s glass.
Apple also said it had a multiyear supply agreement with Coherent to produce lasers for the iPhone’s facial recognition system.
The company said its U.S.-based supply chain would produce more than 19 billion chips for its products this year. That’s including chips made by TSMC in Arizona, Apple said. It also includes U.S.-made wafers from GlobalWafers and chips from Texas Instruments.
Apple said it would collaborate with Texas Instruments to install additional tools in factories in Utah and Texas. GlobalFoundries, a U.S.-based foundry that manufactures older chips particularly for the U.S. government, will manufacture wireless charging technology in New York for Apple.
The iPhone maker said its goal was to have an “end-to-end” supply chain, which means that every part of the chipmaking process can take place on American soil.
“Oh, I love that you’re doing this,” Trump said after reading a list of Apple’s announcements.
“President Trump shared some kind words about that work, but he also asked us to think about what more we could commit to doing,” Cook said about Apple’s earlier initial $500 billion commitment. “Mr. President, we took that challenge very seriously.”
Trump has criticized Apple and Cook for not making its smartphones in the U.S., a move that Apple has never signaled that it is likely to make. Experts say that moving production of a high-volume, complicated electronics product like the iPhone to the U.S. would be economically infeasible and could take years.
When asked about the possibility of making the iPhone in the U.S. on Wednesday, Cook said that many of the parts inside the device were made in the U.S.
“If you look at the bulk of it, we’re doing a lot of the semiconductors here, we’re doing the glass here, we’re doing the face ID module here,” Cook said.
Not Apple’s first U.S. commitment
Apple has made similar announcements in the past. In 2018, under pressure during the first Trump administration, Apple committed to spend $350 billion in the U.S. over five years, or about $70 billion per year. In 2021, Apple announced plans to spend $430 billion over five years, or $86 billion per year in the U.S. Wednesday’s announcement has the company at $600 billion over four years, or $125 billion per year.
Much of what Apple has announced has come to fruition, although the company doesn’t report its U.S. spending on an annual basis and suppliers generally don’t break out how much revenue comes from Apple.
The company also faces increased tariffs that could hurt its profits. It’s currently paying for tariffs placed on Chinese imports earlier this year, and faces increased import taxes on semiconductors when the Trump Administration finishes a so-called Section 232 investigation.
Trump said on Wednesday that he planned to impose a 100% tariff on semiconductors and chips, but that Apple was exempt because it is committing to build in the U.S.
Apple in May said that the majority of phones it’s selling in the U.S. are assembled in India to avoid Chinese tariffs, and although tariffs on India are going up to 25%, White House sources told CNBC that the iPhone maker will be “largely unaffected” by the India tariffs. Apple said that tariffs could cost the company $1.1 billion in the current quarter.
In 2017, Apple announced that it was creating a $1 billion manufacturing fund, which would go towards future purchase commitments with U.S. suppliers. Apple raised that to $10 billion earlier this year. Corning, one of the participants in Wednesday’s announcement, previously got two publiccommitments from Apple’s manufacturing fund.
In 2021, Apple said that its U.S. spending was outpacing its initial 2018 announcement. In its initial announcement, the company said it would spend $10 billion on data centers in North Carolina, Oregon, Nevada, Arizona and Iowa. Apple operates data centers in all those states today.
Apple on Wednesday said it was expanding data centers in North Carolina, Iowa, Nevada and Oregon.