Trump Trades the Chainsaw for a Scalpel
On March 6, 2025, in a tense emergency cabinet meeting, Elon Musk clashed with several ministers over their resistance to firing public employees. Donald Trump ultimately called for a more surgical approach to downsizing the federal government. Instead of Musk’s famous chainsaw, they were to use a scalpel. Musk agreed to wear a suit and tie for the occasion, but in the end, he could not avoid direct confrontation with several ministers. He particularly clashed with Marco Rubio, who oversees Foreign Affairs; with the Transportation Secretary, over the hiring of air traffic controllers; and with the head of the Department of Veterans Affairs, a key stronghold of Trumpism.
The world now awaits the next episode of this battle, which promises to be as spectacular as the previous ones. However, Trump appears to have shifted ultimate responsibility for budget cuts to his ministers, relegating the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE)—Musk’s special department—to more of an advisory or auditing role.
Notably, during the meeting, Musk insisted that his business record—having founded and restructured several major companies—made him the most qualified person to reform public administration. Musk has created and transformed entire industries. His achievements are remarkable, and his methods equally radical.
Yet his skills and management style raise doubts about how applicable they are to the public sector. He may be reaching his level of incompetence, illustrating the well-known Peter Principle. This phenomenon is common in organizations where promotions are based on past performance without assessing whether the new role requires different skills. A skilled doctor does not necessarily make a good hospital administrator, nor does a brilliant engineer automatically become an effective CEO. If an organization consistently promotes employees without evaluating their suitability, it risks being led by incompetents—people who rise to positions they can no longer manage.
This dysfunction is also evident in politics when people transition between different levels of responsibility without considering structural differences. In particular, business and government operate under distinct organizational logics and require management skills that are not always transferable. Many signs suggest that the Peter Principle applies to both Musk and Trump. Both rose to power fueled by their previous successes, but their governance exposes the difficulties of applying business and media strategies to public administration and politics.
Disruptive leaders like Trump—often surrounded by equally disruptive figures like Musk—come to power because many voters believe professional politicians have failed. Their rise is a conscious, albeit unstable, gamble: disruption is the price many voters are willing to pay to break the deadlock and escape what they perceive as the vicious cycle of conventional politics.
Being outsiders gives them credibility, facilitating their rise to power, but it also hinders their ability to govern effectively. Their success in the private sector reinforces the perception that they will be efficient in public management. However, there is no guarantee that those skills will translate. Trump applies his business and media logic to politics, employing a transactional approach that creates uncertainty among allies and rivals. His threats to withdraw from NATO or abruptly renegotiate trade agreements have weakened trust in the United States as a reliable partner. Musk, for his part, applies private-sector management strategies to government, disregarding the complexity and checks and balances of the public sector.
But the issue is not just about competence—it is about balance. Restructuring the state apparatus requires a precarious equilibrium between transformation and disruption. Thursday’s meeting suggests a possible shift toward a less disruptive balance, as do other recent moves, such as granting tariff exemptions or reviving threats against Russia.
Domestically, reducing the public sector has been a persistent challenge that has frustrated even reformist administrations like Reagan’s. To tackle this, Trump has structured his cabinet in an unusual way: alongside the Treasury and spending ministries, he has created DOGE with broad, undefined powers and placed it in the hands of a formidable maverick like Musk.
The disruption is structural, as the very design of DOGE creates inevitable clashes with ministries and the Treasury. These tensions are expected, but they could also offer some hope of success—if they help balance the competing interests of DOGE, which seeks to cut costs, and the ministries, which aim to preserve them.
Many uncertainties remain. On one hand, there is the question of whether ministers truly intend to streamline their departments and how much institutional resistance they can muster. On the other hand, it is unclear whether Musk will accept the role of chief auditor that Trump has assigned him—an oversight-focused function he has never embraced in his corporate career. On the contrary, in his companies, he has always preferred to lead, and when unable to do so, he has sold his shares and walked away. It would be ideal for him not to quit this time, because it is precisely his conflict with the spending ministries that might bring about a productive balance of costs and benefits—an unstable but essential equilibrium for effectively downsizing the public sector.
English version prepared with ChatGPT-4.0