The Republicans were always the party of big business, but Mr Trump is turning them into a playpen for oligarchs One person turns up surprisingly often at Donald Trump’s side. Not his No 2, JD Vance, nor his wife, Melania, but another man a quarter-century younger and about $300bn heavier: Elon Musk. The two hunkered down in Mar-a-Lago on the night of the election, celebrating the results. This week they were in Texas, watching Mr Musk’s staff test-launch a spacecraft. During the campaign, Mr Musk personally chipped in $130m , made speeches at rallies and organised campaigns to “get out the vote”. Last week, the world’s richest man was picked by the president-elect to run a new “department of government efficiency”. So close are the pair that Mr Musk dubs himself “First Buddy”. American politics has always been coiled around money, tight as a vine around a trunk. Nearly 25 years ago, George W Bush joked at a swanky white-tie dinner : “Some people call you the elites; I call you my ba
A letter by 79 firms voicing ‘significant concerns’ over the budget is likely to do little more than irritate Rachel Reeves While the farmers took to the streets of Westminster, the shopkeepers protested in the old-fashioned way. They wrote a polite letter to the chancellor voicing their “significant concerns” over “the sheer scale” of budget measures that, they say, will push up their industry’s costs by £7bn next year and “make job losses inevitable and higher prices a certainty”. A total of 79 firms signed, including all the FTSE 100 crew – Tesco, Sainsbury’s, Next, Marks & Spencer, B&Q owner Kingfisher, JD Sports and the AB Foods-owned Primark. This display of unity will irritate the Treasury but, almost certainly, will not cause Rachel Reeves to rethink. The chancellor has already told firms how to deal with the rise in employer national insurance contributions (NICs), the most contentious measure and one that comprises £2.33bn of the £7bn. They should absorb it through