File picture of Elon Musk with Donald Trump at a rally in Butler, Pennsylvania
| Photo Credit: Reuters

U.S. President-elect Donald Trump said on Tuesday (November 12, 2024) Elon Musk and former Republican presidential candidate Vivek Ramaswamy will lead the newly created Department of Government Efficiency.

Mr. Musk and Mr. Ramaswamy “will pave the way for my Administration to dismantle Government Bureaucracy, slash excess regulations, cut wasteful expenditures, and restructure Federal Agencies,” Mr. Trump said in a statement.

Mr. Trump said their work would conclude by July 4, 2026, adding that a smaller and more efficient government would be a “gift” to the country on the 250th anniversary of the signing of the Declaration of Independence.

The appointments reward two Trump supporters from the private sector.

Mr. Musk leads electric car company Tesla, social media platform X and rocket company SpaceX, while Mr. Ramaswamy is the founder of a pharmaceutical company who ran for the Republican presidential nomination against Mr. Trump and then threw his support behind the former president after dropping out.

Mr. Musk gave millions of dollars to support Mr. Trump’s presidential campaign and publicly appeared with him. Mr. Trump had said he would offer Mr. Musk, the world’s richest person, a role in his administration promoting government efficiency.

The acronym of the new department — DOGE — coincides with the name of the cryptocurrency Dogecoin that Musk promotes.

“This will send shockwaves through the system, and anyone involved in government waste, which is a lot of people!” Mr. Musk said, according to Mr. Trump’s statement, which called the new government initiative “potentially ‘The Manhattan Project’ of our time,” referring to the U.S. plan to build the atomic bomb that helped end World War Two.

File picture of Donald Trump and Senator Marco Rubio in Raleigh, North Carolina
| Photo Credit: Reuters

Donald Trump is expected to tap U.S. Senator Marco Rubio to be his Secretary of State, sources said on Monday (November 11, 2024), putting the Florida-born politician on track to be the first Latino to serve as America’s top diplomat once the Republican president-elect takes office in January.

Mr. Rubio was arguably the most hawkish option on Mr. Trump’s shortlist for Secretary of State, and he has in years past advocated for a muscular foreign policy with respect to America’s geopolitical foes, including China, Iran and Cuba.

Over the last several years he has softened some of his stances to align more closely with Mr. Trump’s views. The president-elect accuses past U.S. presidents of leading America into costly and futile wars and has pushed for a more restrained foreign policy.

While the famously mercurial Mr. Trump could always change his mind at the last minute, he appeared to have settled on his pick as of Monday, according to the sources, who requested anonymity to discuss private conversations.

Representatives for Mr. Trump and Mr. Rubio did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

Global wars

The new administration will confront a world more volatile and dangerous than it was when Mr. Trump took office in 2017, with wars raging in Ukraine and the Middle East and China aligning itself more closely with U.S. foes Russia and Iran.

The Ukraine crisis will be high on Mr. Rubio’s agenda.

Mr. Rubio, 53, has said in recent interviews that Ukraine needs to seek a negotiated settlement with Russia rather than focus on regaining all territory that Russia has taken in the last decade. He was also one of 15 Republican senators to vote against a $95 billion military aid package for Ukraine, passed in April.

While Mr. Rubio was far from the most isolationist option, his likely selection nonetheless underlines a broad shift in Republican foreign policy views under Mr. Trump.

Once the party of hawks who advocated military intervention and a muscular foreign policy, most of Mr. Trump’s allies now preach restraint, particularly in Europe, where many Republicans complain U.S. allies are not paying their fair share on defence.

“I’m not on Russia’s side — but unfortunately the reality of it is that the way the war in Ukraine is going to end is with a negotiated settlement,” Mr. Rubio told NBC in September.

Significance of selecting Rubio

Mr. Rubio’s selection holds domestic as well as international significance.

Mr. Trump beat Democratic Vice President Kamala Harris in the November 5 election in part by winning over large numbers of Latinos, who had voted overwhelmingly for Democrats in previous election cycles but have become an increasingly diverse demographic in a political sense, with more and more Latinos voting Republican.

By selecting Mr. Rubio for a key policy role, Mr. Trump may help consolidate electoral gains among Latinos and make clear that they have a place at the highest levels of his administration.

Mr. Rubio was one of three final contenders for Mr. Trump’s vice-presidential pick. The president-elect ultimately chose U.S. Senator J.D. Vance of Ohio, a hard-right figure who is known for his isolationist foreign policy positions.

China, Cuba hawk

Some of Mr. Trump’s supporters will be skeptical of his decision to tap Mr. Rubio, who until recently held muscular foreign policy positions that contradict those of Trump.

During Mr. Trump’s 2017-2021 term, for instance, Mr. Rubio co-sponsored legislation that would make it harder for Mr. Trump to withdraw from the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation, by requiring two-thirds of the Senate to ratify withdrawal.

Mr. Trump has railed for years against NATO member countries that failed to meet agreed military spending targets and warned during the campaign that he would not only refuse to defend nations “delinquent” on funding but would also encourage Russia “to do whatever the hell they want” to them.

Mr. Rubio is a top China hawk in the Senate.

Most notably, he called on the Treasury Department in 2019 to launch a national security review of popular Chinese social media app TikTok’s acquisition of Musical.ly, prompting an investigation and troubled divestment order.

As the top Republican on the Senate Intelligence Committee, he has also kept up the heat on the Biden administration, demanding it block all sales to Huawei earlier this year after the sanctioned Chinese tech company released a new laptop powered by an Intel AI processor chip.

Mr. Rubio, whose grandfather fled Cuba in 1962, is also an outspoken opponent of normalising relations with the Cuban government, a position Mr. Trump shares.

The head of the House subcommittee overseeing Latin American affairs, he is also a frequent and fierce critic of Nicolas Maduro’s government in Venezuela.