Reuters World News - Trump-Musk spat, SpaceX’s Dragon and travel ban

Episode Date: June 6, 2025

U.S. President Donald Trump has threatened to cut off government contracts to Elon Musk’s companies after he suggested the President should be impeached. Elon Musk threatens – and then rolls it back – a decommission of SpaceX’s Dragon – the only U.S. spacecraft capable of sending astronauts to the ISS. And we look at Trump’s travel ban as the administration intensifies its immigration crackdown. * This pod has been updated to remove references to a potential telephone call between President Trump and Elon Musk. A White House official said on Friday that no phone call between the two men is planned for the day. Sign up for the Reuters Econ World newsletter here. Listen to the Reuters Econ World podcast here. Visit the Thomson Reuters Privacy Statement for information on our privacy and data protection practices. You may also visit megaphone.fm/adchoices to opt out of targeted advertising. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Today, the gloves are off. Elon Musk and Donald Trump go for the jugular, with the spat slamming Tesla stock, and risking an unprecedented shake-up to the U.S. space program. And why the Trump administration is leaving some countries off the travel ban list. It's Friday, June 6th. This is Reuters World News, bringing you everything you need to know from the front line,

in 10 minutes every weekday. I'm Sharon Reisch Garson in New York. And I'm Tara Oaks in Liverpool. The bromance is over, and a brawl has broken out in real time on television and social media. Look, Elon and I had a great relationship. I don't know if we're well anymore.

I was surprised. US President Donald Trump criticizing Elon Musk as the once-close relationship between the world's most powerful man and its richest unraveled publicly. The on-camera comments came after Musk blasted Trump's tax bill earlier in the week, as fiscally reckless and a disgusting abomination. But he knew every aspect of this bill.

He knew it better than almost anybody. And he never had a problem until right after he left. The pair then lobbing verbal barbs at each other on their social media platforms, with Trump threatening to cut off government contracts to Musk's country. companies, and Musk, suggesting the U.S. president should be impeached. Our reporter Trevor Honeycutt is following all the twists and turns. It was pretty widely predicted, kind of both within Trump circles and just kind of the general public, that these two big egos could not coexist simultaneously forever.

And so there's always been kind of a betting pool in D.C. as to how long this bromance between these two big personalities could last. Senior Republicans and even White House officials have told my colleague Nanteed Debose that they find this infuriating and deeply worrying that there's been this split at a time when the Republican Party is trying to project unity behind Trump's vision. Musk seems to have taken Trump's threats to cut his government contracts seriously, saying he would begin decommissioning SpaceX's dragon spacecraft used by NASA. Hours later, however, he appeared to reverse course.

Responding to a follower on X urging him and Trump to cool off, Musk wrote, good advice. Okay, we won't decommissioned Dragon. Still, Musk's mere threat to abruptly pull its dragon spacecraft out of service marks an unprecedented outburst from one of NASA's leading commercial partners. Sharon spoke to our business of space reporter Joey Roulette. Musk has many contracts, right, with the government. How dependent is the U.S. on Musk?

The United States is extremely dependent on Elon Musk and on his company, SpaceX, for accessing space and for kind of right now being one of the world's top space powers. SpaceX plays a crucial role in that. And that's with SpaceX's launch business. It's Falcon 9 rocket launches a majority of the Pentagon satellites into space as well as NASA's science payloads into space. NASA picked SpaceX to use Starship to land humans on the moon this decade, although that program is facing changes because of this administration.

So Starlink is an incredibly massive satellite constellation that the Pentagon has sought to use as well. And the intelligence community is working with SpaceX to build its own kind of spy constellation that is somewhat similar to the Starlink system as well. So there's a lot of links and dependencies between the U.S. government and SpaceX. SpaceX has won over $22 billion worth of contracts with the U.S. government. About 15 billion of that is at NASA and about the rest is with the Pentagon. So there's a very, very huge interdependency between SpaceX and the U.S. government. Musk and Trump have been trading barbs throughout the day on Thursday. So is it possible to de-escalate at this point or to rewind?

Yeah, that's the big question that everyone's really asking right now. And it's really how far is Trump going to go with these threats? I mean, he threatened to basically cancel all contracts from Elon's companies. That would be devastating to SpaceX. And that would be extremely unprecedented. So it remains to be seen. The war of words certainly inflicted damage on Tesla. Carmel Crimmons is here with more.

Investors dumped Tesla's stock on Thursday as the back and forth between Trump and Musk got more acrimonious, and the electric vehicle maker ended the day down 14%, wiping $150 billion off its market value. Continuing this feud is very risky for Musk's business empire. The fear is that US regulators craft rules in a way that could single out Tesla's plans for its driverless cars. With EV sales falling, Musk has reorientated Tesla's future around. ran self-driving robotaxies, so there's a lot of investor sensitivity out there. The U.S. and China will resume trade talks that both sides hope will resolve a host of issues, including tariffs and critical minerals.

Trump and she spoke by phone for about an hour and a half. He had a really good conversation. By the way, he invited me to China and I invited him here. We've both accepted. An intense Russian missile and drone barrage overnight has killed four people in Kiev. That's according to Ukrainian officials. The attack comes on the heels of a warning by President Vladimir Putin that the Kremlin would hit back following Ukraine's audacious attacks deep inside Russia earlier this week.

The Trump administration is imposing sanctions on four judges presiding over the International Criminal Court. The unprecedented move is retaliation over the arrest warrant issued by the ICC for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, and a past decision to open a case into alleged war crimes by U.S. troops in Afghanistan. At least 10 Israeli airstrikes of pummeled Beirut southern suburbs on the eve of a Muslim feast day. Lebanese officials say the attacks violate a ceasefire deal.

We told you yesterday about Trump reinstating the U.S. travel ban, preventing citizens from 12 countries from entering the U.S. The ban also limits entry for people from seven countries. Trump says it's needed to protect against foreign terrorists and for national security. It'll be in effect on June 9th, though visas issued before then won't be revoked. Our deputy foreign affairs editor, Humera Pommack, is in Washington.

We should keep in mind that the administration has been working on this since coming into office on January 20th. Reuters reported in mid-March one iteration, one draft of this travel ban list. So it's fair to say that this does not come out of nowhere. And it really fits into their overall policy, right? How different is this from the ban during Trump's first term? So the number of countries are higher, obviously. The first iteration that we reported in March had 41 countries. This one has close to 20. And so in that sense, it's much more expensive. I think this ban also requires a state of constant negotiation. The president has said there could be some changes. Other countries might be added. We can understand that some countries might get off it. We have been hearing from sources that,

he's opening the door for a permanent period of negotiation. If those negotiations go well, you can get off the list. And are we likely to see any legal challenges? I mean, a lot of scholars that we've spoken to say the ban is likely to face legal challenges. Those lawsuits, they say probably have an uphill climb because the latest ban contains various exemptions and it cites very specific security concerns with each country, those losses probably will have an uphill climb. And before the weekend, a recommended listen.

How China came to dominate the rare earth's supply chain and what Beijing's dominance and their export curbs mean for the rest of the world. That special episode of Reuters World News drops on Saturday morning. any of the stories from today, check out Reuters.com or the Reuters app. Don't forget to follow us on your favorite podcast player. We'll be back on Monday with our daily headline show.