Trump names Musk, Ramaswamy to lead Department of Government Efficiency

(CNN) — President-elect Donald Trump announced Tuesday that Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy will lead a new “Department of Government Efficiency” in his second administration.

“Together, these two wonderful Americans will pave the way for my Administration to dismantle Government Bureaucracy, slash excess regulations, cut wasteful expenditures, and restructure Federal Agencies,” Trump said in a statement.

The announcement of Ramaswamy and particularly Musk, who leads companies with existing, lucrative government contracts, raises immediate questions about potential conflicts of interest. And it is not immediately clear how the department, which Trump said would “provide advice and guidance from outside of Government,” will operate.

Trump had proposed the creation of a government efficiency commission as part of a slate of new economic plans that he unveiled in early September. At the time, he said Musk had agreed to lead it if he were to secure a return to the White House.

Trump’s statement Tuesday night quoted Musk as saying that “this will send shockwaves through the system, and anyone involved in Government waste, which is a lot of people!”

Ramaswamy separately responded on X with a slogan he often used during his presidential campaign to call for the elimination of federal agencies, writing: “SHUT IT DOWN.”

Ramaswamy, who previously challenged Trump in the Republican presidential primary before endorsing him in January, made reducing waste in government spending a key policy platform for his campaign.

Last year, Ramaswamy – who had promised on the campaign trail to eliminate the FBI, the Department of Education and the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, which would lay off thousands of federal workers in the process – released a white paper outlining a legal framework he said would allow the president to eliminate federal agencies of his choice.