'High on the list of items': Ramaswamy threat to claw back Rivian loan sparks criticism of Musk's conflict of interest
Source: CNN
Vivek Ramaswamy, the incoming co-chair of President-elect Donald Trump’s commission to cut government spending, has set his sights on money the Biden administration is dispersing in its final days in office, including a key loan to a rival company of his commission co-chair, Elon Musk.
Last week, the Department of Energy announced a $6.6 billion conditional loan commitment to Rivian, the electric vehicle startup that is a nascent competitor to Tesla, Musk’s $1 trillion car company.
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The DOE loan to Rivian was in the works for two years and would help finance a new manufacturing plant in Georgia, which Rivian says would create some 7,500 full-time jobs. The loan is among 32 deals worth a total of nearly $55 billion that the DOE has doled out under Biden. All of that money eventually has to be repaid to the federal government, which isn’t on the hook unless companies go bankrupt.
The irony is that Tesla received a similar DOE loan for $465 million in 2010, a time when Musk’s company needed cash ahead of its first public sale of stock. The loan proved to be a game-changer for Tesla, which in 2013 ended up repaying it in full, nearly 10 years ahead of schedule.
Read more: https://www.cnn.com/2024/12/05/politics/ramaswamy-claw-back-rivian-musk-conflict/index.html
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