Breaking News: Elon Musk assures voters that Trump’s victory would deliver “temporary hardship…. See More

Elon Musk has arguably done more than any single individual to aid Donald Trump’s campaign. The mega-billionaire has put more than $75 million toward electing the former president, turned America’s most politically influential social media platform into a vehicle for right-wing propaganda, orchestrated a (shambolic) get-out-the-vote effort, and repeatedly appeared beside Trump on the campaign trail.

Now, as the race enters its homestretch, Musk is trying to clinch Trump’s victory with a bracing closing argument: If our side wins, you will experience severe economic pain.

If elected, Trump has vowed to put Musk in charge of a new “government efficiency commission,” which would identify supposedly wasteful programs that should be eliminated or slashed. During a telephone town hall last Friday, Musk said that his commission’s work would “necessarily involve some temporary hardship.”

Days later, Musk suggested that this budget cutting — combined with Trump’s mass deportation plan — would cause a market-crashing economic “storm.”

On his social media platform, X (a.k.a. Twitter), an anonymous user posted Tuesday that, “If Trump succeeds in forcing through mass deportations, combined with Elon hacking away at the government, firing people and reducing the deficit – there will be an initial severe overreaction in the economy…Market will tumble. But when the storm passes and everyone realizes we are on sounder footing, there will be a rapid recovery to a healthier, sustainable economy.”

Musk replied, “Sounds about right.”

This is one of the more truthful arguments that Musk has made for Trump’s election — which is to say, only half of it is false. If Trump delivers on his stated plans, Americans will indeed suffer material hardship. But such deprivation would neither be necessary for — nor conducive to — achieving a healthier or more sustainable economy.

Already, US retailers are saying that they will increase prices if Trump is elected in order to offset the impact of his 10 percent universal tariff on imports. And contrary to Trump’s suggestion, those painful price hikes would not yield a stronger US manufacturing industry in the long term.

Trump’s plans for mass deportation, meanwhile, would trigger severe labor shortages in the construction and agricultural sectors, rendering food and housing more expensive. And these immediate disruptions would not raise American wages in the long run, but rather, make the economy less productive, and Medicare and Social Security more difficult to sustain.

Musk’s plans for slashing federal spending would be similarly calamitous. He has offered few details about his vision for downsizing Uncle Sam, but recently suggested that the federal government’s $6.75 trillion budget should be cut by at least $2 trillion. Austerity on that scale would disrupt myriad government services on which Democrats and Republicans rely, while threatening to throw the US economy into severe recession. And there is little basis for believing that an economic paradise would rise from such ruins.