Up First from NPR
Trump and Musk Break Up, Tariffs Raise $70 billion, ICE Detention Conditions
Fri, 06 Jun 2025
A rift between President Donald Trump and Elon Musk escalated on Thursday with the two trading barbs on their respective social media platforms. Reports from the Treasury Department show Trump's tariffs have raised nearly 70-billion dollars so far this year. And, migrant detainees staged a protest at an Immigration and Customs Enforcement run facility in Miami.Want more comprehensive analysis of the most important news of the day, plus a little fun? Subscribe to the Up First newsletter.Today's episode of Up First was edited by Roberta Rampton, Pallavi Gogoi, Eric Westervelt, Lisa Thomson and Arezou Rezvani. It was produced by Ziad Buchh, Nia Dumas and Christopher Thomas. We get engineering support from Arthur Laurent, our technical director is Carleigh Strange and our Executive Producer is Jay Shaylor. Learn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoicesNPR Privacy Policy
Chapter 1: What happens when Trump and Musk break up?
What happens when you have a friend and then you break up?
I'm very disappointed in Elon. I've helped Elon a lot.
Elon Musk said the president's budget plan borrowed too much. President Trump talked of cutting Musk's contracts. Musk said, OK, I'm Steve Inskeep, and this is Up First from NPR News. The Treasury Department estimates President Trump's tariffs brought in $70 billion for the government, which may be good, but who paid?
That revenue comes from somewhere. It's a tax on the backs of the people that are importing.
Also, migrants at a detention facility lined up in a courtyard so that they spelled S-O-S. I've heard people use the word starving. What's known about their condition? Stay with us. We've got the news you need to start your day.
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This is the moment in the relationship where you go back through the old pictures and cry, or maybe edit the other person out. Elon Musk and President Trump had seemed inseparable for months. Musk brought one of his many children, X, to the White House. He turned up casually dressed at cabinet meetings.
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Chapter 2: How much money have Trump's tariffs raised?
Obviously, that can only be done with the support of everyone in this room. And I'd like to thank everyone for your support.
He stood up the Department of Government Efficiency, one of the world's richest men joyously firing people while waving around a chainsaw.
This is the chainsaw for bureaucracy.
Chainsaw! And President Trump was all in favor as recently as last week when Musk left government service.
And he's one of the greatest business leaders and innovators the world has ever produced. He stepped forward to put his very great talents into the service of our nation, and we appreciate it.
This is all history. Maybe because they broke up yesterday. NPR White House correspondent Danielle Kurtz-Laban was watching. Hi there, Danielle.
Hey, good morning.
I guess we should note this very personal seeming dispute began with an actual policy disagreement. What is it?
Ostensibly, yeah. I mean, the big, beautiful bill was at the start of all of this. That bill is the massive policy package Republicans are trying to pass right now. Musk had loudly criticized that bill for days because of the cost of the bill. At one point, Musk called the bill a disgusting abomination. And look, the bill is expensive.
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Chapter 3: What are the conditions of migrants in detention?
In other words, the tariffs could help to fill the hole that congressional Republicans have been digging with that tax and spending bill. But keep in mind, the tariff revenue isn't just coming out of thin air and is not being paid by foreign countries. It's mostly being paid by Americans, like Patrick Allen. He's a wine importer in Columbus, Ohio.
That revenue comes from somewhere. It's a tax on the backs of the people that are importing either raw materials or, in my case, wines. We're the people that are paying this tax. And eventually it gets built into the price everybody's paying for goods.
And congressional forecasters acknowledge as much. They say while the tariffs will bring in a lot of money for the government, they will also likely lead to higher inflation and slower economic growth.
How much of a drag on the overall economy are these tariffs then?
Yeah, the CBO projects a fairly small drag, but it's really just a guess because we don't have any recent experience with tariffs of this size. You'd have to go all the way back to the Great Depression to find import taxes this high in the United States.
So Shia Kabbas, who's been keeping tabs on the tariffs at the Bipartisan Policy Center, says a lot of economists are worried the tariffs will actually do more damage than the CBO is predicting.
Some are forecasting larger impacts and potentially pushing us into a recession. We won't know if that actually materializes until we see the fallout.
And the tariffs themselves have been really unpredictable as the president tries to negotiate with U.S. trading partners. So that presents another challenge, not only for forecasters, but more importantly, for the businesses and families who are trying to make decisions in this environment.
How do businesses handle that unpredictability, changing tariffs day by day?
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