【Text by Mary Harrington, Translation by Observer News Network, Guo Han】

One year ago, Donald Trump literally "escaped bullets," which instantly transformed his presidential campaign image from "challenger" to "legend." A few days later, his running mate J.D. Vance promised in a vice-presidential nomination speech that the Trump administration would "commit to serving the working class."

Vance stated that American citizens should be prioritized: "We will no longer bring in foreign labor; we will fight for American citizens, their good jobs, and decent wages." His message was clear: "No more globalism." "America is not just an idea," Vance told the rapt audience, "it is a group with a shared history and a shared future. In short, it is a nation."

Yet, one year later, this vision seems more precarious than ever. Last weekend, Elon Musk — who helped Trump win the election — announced the formation of a new "American Party," promising the American public, "Take back your freedom." The "American Party's" account on X platform immediately challenged the Trump campaign, claiming, "Make America Great Again (MAGA) is old news, 'wokeism' is just a minor disturbance. The center is the future."

Can a tech-oriented new centrist party have political space? No one knows yet. But ironically, this is exactly the situation Trump tried to create — and Musk's actions seriously misread the real political landscape of the United States he wanted to influence. By carefully reviewing the entire story of the seemingly broken "brotherhood" between Trump and Musk, we found that the reason for their split was not that Trump deviated from "centrist politics," but rather that he tried to balance the conflicting interests of two factions within his alliance on the most politically sensitive issue of this election — immigration — thus creating a new middle ground. The conclusion is surprising: even if Musk's new party seems unlikely to succeed, his anger is understandable — because he was tricked.

Musk announced his intention to form the "American Party," and Trump publicly expressed that this was absurd, saying he was "deeply hurt." Screenshot of video

The Trump-style Republicans have long abandoned the old version of American "centrist" conservatism. This conservatism embraced a bipartisan consensus on economic issues: as long as it could promote overall GDP growth, it would tolerate relatively high levels of immigration and harm to the American middle class. However, although Trump's challenge to this consensus during his 2016-2020 term already sparked enough controversy, this time his handling of the immigration issue is much more complicated, because his 2024 political alliance has just received strong support from Silicon Valley tech elites — even though these people are not entirely neoliberal, they definitely support open immigration policies more than the MAGA base.

Therefore, from the very beginning, Trump 2.0 has been caught between two political forces: on one side are the financiers of large technology companies, who strongly support large-scale immigration based on cultural preferences and business interests; on the other side are the MAGA voter base, for whom economic and cultural nationalism is the whole reason for voting for Trump.

Since Trump was elected last year, this tension has surfaced almost immediately through a key issue — H1B visas. This controversial program allows U.S. companies to bring in workers from abroad, usually in mid-to-high skill knowledge-based roles in technology, engineering, and business. Critics accuse the visa issuance process of being used to suppress local wages and circumvent employment rights protections. But especially for Silicon Valley employers with international perspectives and tech orientation, the H1B visa provides an attractive way to recruit global talent, despite the fact that this characteristic obviously contradicts the interests of local workers.

Conflict soon emerged between Trump's Silicon Valley supporters and those groups who rely on Trump to protect them from foreign competitors. Vivek Ramaswamy, a former presidential candidate, made inappropriate remarks on social media, accusing American culture of favoring foreign workers, which triggered strong backlash. To make matters worse, Ramaswamy himself has Indian heritage, similar to many American H1B laborers.

Ramaswamy had hoped to work with Musk in Trump's "Department of Government Efficiency" (DOGE), but his remarks were repeatedly criticized until Trump expressed conditional support for H1B visas (a move to appease his new tech circle friends) and then pushed Ramaswamy out as a scapegoat, gradually calming the situation.

It can be seen that even before Trump took office, suspicion had already arisen. The interests of the MAGA camp and Silicon Valley are so clearly contradictory on the immigration issue that the situation was almost destined to go another way. For a long time, I was puzzled about how Trump intended to reconcile this irreconcilable contradiction; now, one angle to interpret the "Trump-Musk rift" is that it is a tragic byproduct of Trump's attempt to mediate the differences. Specifically, it was the measures taken to pass Trump's congressional massive spending bill, which included substantial funding for strengthening U.S. border security.

This legislation, known as the "Big and Beautiful Act," contains an astonishing 940 pages. It faced strong opposition from some Republicans, as fiscal hawks estimate that national debt will increase by $3.9 trillion; it also faced opposition from most progressive groups, as it significantly cuts healthcare spending, rolls back on renewable energy, and cuts taxes for the wealthy.

The core of the bill is providing up to $170 billion in funding to the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) to support large-scale deportation operations. The rest of the bill is filled with various special exemptions, bureaucratic procedures, and special interest group demands, which will greatly increase the U.S. government deficit and have been denounced by Musk as "a pile of disgusting, mountainous political pork deals."

On July 3rd, local time, Republican lawmakers in the U.S. celebrated the passage of the "Big and Beautiful" bill pushed by President Trump. Visual China

However, what if all of this is considered the price Trump must pay to fulfill his promise to the MAGA camp on immigration? The massive investment in ICE will result in the department's size and spending exceeding the military of most sovereign states. This means that despite Trump's clear compromise on H1B immigration (to accommodate Silicon Valley powers), he is still trying to fulfill his promise to cut low-skilled or illegal immigration. In other words, Trump may be attempting to implement a true centrist policy — "accepting some immigrants, but only high-skilled ones" — a goal that every party has promised but never achieved.

From this perspective, Musk may be trying to position himself as an alternative centrist option to the MAGA camp. However, considering the most critical (immigration) issue of the previous U.S. election, given the well-known limits of political operations ("the art of possibility"), it seems that it is actually Trump who is trying to carve out a middle ground. And Musk? He is clearly furious and baffled — probably feeling betrayed.

It's not surprising. In order to advance the DOGE plan, he not only caused Tesla's market value to drop by a third, but also lost a lot of personal cultural capital. The DOGE plan initially boasted of saving $2 trillion for the U.S. government; however, with Musk's exit in May, its actual results are far from the claimed goals. This could be another failure due to arrogance — or, as Musk put it, being manipulated by cunning politicians.

Although the DOGE did not save the $2 trillion in expenses it boasted about, it succeeded in eliminating Trump opponents in the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) and the U.S. Department of Education. These actions had already appeared in the conservative "2025 Plan" framework and were ultimately realized by Musk.

Was this the original goal of establishing DOGE? Was Musk purely used as a pawn? Even if Trump himself doesn't like reading, some key figures in the Trump team clearly read Machiavelli's works. In any case, Musk invested a lot of real money and personal reputation in politics, and it's natural for him to expect some reciprocation, such as a green light for his business interests.

However, the "Big and Beautiful Act" directly cut the government subsidies for renewable energy, with several cuts directly hitting Tesla's profit and loss line, potentially causing losses of billions of dollars. Trump also insisted that this is the real reason why Musk was furious about the "Big and Beautiful Act."

Putting aside the online quarrels, the picture that emerges is that Musk is a naive newcomer in the U.S. political arena: he thinks politics is like business, that by hiring a few smart people with money, they will do everything according to orders. On the contrary, the opponents are better at every aspect. Musk was used as a pawn to deal with several departments in the entrenched bureaucracy that were hostile to the president; once he took the cost-cutting task seriously and started creating embarrassing headlines, he was kicked out immediately. Finally, he was completely discarded — because Musk gradually realized that his so-called "allies" in the government never really took cost-cutting seriously, their goal from the beginning was political — in short, to give the political giant that is the U.S. government a comprehensive overhaul.

At the same time, in the game of real politics, the Trump administration is becoming more stable. If the astronomical border security funding in the "Big and Beautiful Act" works as planned, I believe Musk's "American Party" will not take off (some people on the internet have already started calling it the "H1B Party"). Especially, as long as Trump maintains his "alternative middle" stance on immigration — even if the deportation actions are harsh, he will still allow some high-skilled immigrants into the United States — he will likely keep the support of the business community, including the Silicon Valley investors.

If Trump can maintain the trust of the MAGA base while ensuring the U.S. does not go bankrupt, he will be unstoppable politically. At that point, the U.S. will not need lengthy abstract debates, such as "what kind of country this country should be, and what it should not be," "whether America is composed of immigrants, different ethnic groups, or something else." Even if reality is chaotic, it will be enough to secure the voters needed for the midterm elections.

As for Musk, he is indeed talented and mission-driven in many aspects. However, if the situation follows Trump's script, it won't be long before everyone, including Musk himself, quietly abandons the "American Party" and goes back to live in the real, messy, and compromising America.

(The original article was published on the UK UnHerd comment website, titled "How Musk Was Played — His New Party Misjudged America." The translation is for readers' reference only and does not represent the views of Observer News Network.)

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