Ben Shapiro Criticizes Trump’s Tariff Policies and Suggests Alternative Leadership

MAGA ally Ben Shapiro has stunningly turned on President Trump and urged him to listen to Elon Musk’s criticism of his tariff policy.

Shapiro, a longtime advocate of the president, shattered the misconception that tariffs benefit Americans, with a surprising revelation on Monday: ‘Musk is correct. Musk is absolutely correct about this.’

Since returning to the White House, the CEO of Tesla has aligned with the president on important voter concerns. However, he strongly criticized tariffs and revealed a dispute with a key advisor instrumental in their implementation.

Shapiro delivered a harsh message to Trump, advising him to follow Musk’s guidance closely regarding his tariff strategy – shortly after global markets suffered severe declines due to his policy choices.

Trump’s trade advisor Peter Navarro has been engaged in a public war of words with Musk since the White House unveiled his controversial reciprocal tariff policy, which sparked market chaos and global fears of a recession.

Musk revealed on Saturday that he hopes the United States will achieve zero-zero tariff agreements with major trade partners. 

Trump has boasted that his phone is ringing off the hook with leaders of other nations seeking to hammer out a new, mutually beneficial agreement.

‘Musk himself suggested that he wants a zero tariff situation, which again, this is the good explanation for why you would do the tariff game,’ Shapiro said. 

‘I urge the president to do precisely what Musk is saying here. Go to zero with all these countries. Go to zero.

‘That’s a win, take the win, move on. That would be good for the economy, good for you, you’d have flexed your muscle, you’d flexed American muscle. That’d be good.’

At the polar opposite end of the debate is Navarro, who has long championed tariffs as the path to success and helped shape the policy with Trump.

Musk called Navarro out on X, publicly telling his followers he ‘ain’t built s**t.’

He then responded to a post on X that noted Navarro has a PhD in economics from Harvard.

‘A PhD in Econ from Harvard is a bad thing, not a good thing. Results in the ego/brains>>1 problem,’ Musk wrote.

Navarro hit back on Sunday, dismissively telling Sunday Morning Futures: ‘He’s got X. He’s got a big microphone. We don’t mind him saying whatever he wants, but the American people need to understand that we know what this is all about.

‘Elon, when he’s in his DOGE lane, is great. But we understand what is going on here. Elon sells cars. [Musk is] in Texas assembling cars that have big parts of that car from Mexico, China, Japan… the electronics come from Taiwan.

‘He’s simply protecting his own interests as any business person would do.’ 

Despite Navarro denying a feud, Shapiro said it was abundantly clear that there is ‘an open battle between Elon and Navarro.’

Weighing in on the feud, Shapiro simply said: ‘Navarro is wrong, Elon is right.’

‘It’s that simple. The reality is that Navarro’s trade prescriptions is this giant trade war where he believes the tariffs are in and of themselves good, not to get to zero. That is a bad economic policy.’

 Shapiro’s criticism of the tariffs began almost instantly, last week noting they were ‘probably unconstitutional’ and had been ‘dropped on the market unilaterally.’

‘[It’s] one of the biggest tax increases on American consumers in the history of America,’ he said.

He added that trade wars are ‘not good’ or ‘easy to win’ if ‘you don’t have a plan’ and that trade deficits aren’t important, noting America’s trading surplus was high during the entirety of the Great Depression. 

‘The way that it was rolled out, with essentially kind of a surprise announcement… replete with contradictory justifications, statistics that are labeled one thing but are really not that thing. It opens itself up to all sorts of critiques from every side.’ 

While on the All In podcast, Shapiro noted that Trump has made himself open to ridicule for taxing the McDonald Islands which has no human population and is inhabited by penguins. 

Shapiro is not the only MAGA loyalist who is concerned about Trump’s latest policy.

Fox News host Jesse Watters addressed Trump’s decision to go golfing as the stock markets plummeted at the weekend, suggesting the president’s behavior in a moment of national volatility would be indefensible – if it were happening under a Democrat.

And Wall Street trader Bill Ackman, one of Trump’s most faithful backers in the financial world, said on Sunday night that the president needed to put his tariff war on hold or risk a ‘self-induced, economic nuclear winter.’

Texas Senator Ted Cruz – who ran for re-election calling himself Trump’s ‘strongest supporter’ in the Senate – warned how the tariffs could ‘hurt jobs and hurt America.’

On his own podcast, he said that he’s not a fan of tariffs and was wary of Republicans defending Trump just to defend Trump. 

‘If we’re in a scenario 30 days from now, 60 days from now, 90 days from now, with massive American tariffs, and massive tariffs on American goods in every other country on earth, that is a terrible outcome,’ he warned.

‘If we go into a recession — particularly a bad recession — 2026 in all likelihood, politically would be a bloodbath.’

Trump has also been dogged by criticism and queries about Musk’s close ties to government and whether he is pulling the strings, spurred on by Musk himself. 

Back in January, when the administration sent two million federal workers a voluntary redundancy offer in an email titled ‘A Fork in the Road’, Musk went on to share – and pin to the top of his X page – an image of a huge fork he had commissioned years prior.

The email he sent to Twitter employees when he bought the social media platform was also framed as a ‘fork in the road’, sparking speculation that Musk was actually behind the Trump administration policy.

And in February, employees at the under-fire Department of Housing and Urban Development arrived to work to find a 19 second AI video of Trump kissing the feet of Musk, alongside the caption: ‘Long live the real king.’ 

Trump has reportedly told his inner circle that Musk could step down from his role at DOGE earlier than expected.

Foes highlighted his dismal failure in Wisconsin where he ploughed $20m into doomed Republican candidates in the state’s Supreme Court race. It was widely viewed as a referendum on Musk.  

The president himself was reportedly incensed that Musk was given clearance for a Pentagon briefing on China, as he was concerned it represented a potential conflict with the tech mogul’s business dealings.

Musk allegedly rubbed several of Trump’s aides the wrong way but perhaps none more so than Chief of Staff Susie Wiles.

The Tesla founder treated Wiles, the most powerful woman in the White House, like a ‘secretary,’ a source told DailyMail.com.

Musk would allegedly use his massive platform on X – where he has 218.5 million followers – to make announcements at the drop of a hat and throw firebombs of rhetoric into the ether.

For his part, Trump made it clear to Musk that he was a member of the staff and Wiles was in charge. 

Musk’s designation as a special government employee meant he was scheduled to step down in May, but he is now leaving early in a cloud of controversy, Politico reported.

Trump’s press secretary Karoline Leavitt immediately poured cold water on claims of a rift, declaring that Politico’s ‘scoop is garbage.’

Leavitt added: ‘Elon Musk and President Trump have both *publicly* stated that Elon will depart from public service as a special government employee when his incredible work at DOGE is complete.’