Elon Musk Warns China Will Overtake US Economy If America Doesn’t Stop ‘Infighting’

SpaceX CEO Elon Musk has issued a warning this week that China, the second-largest economy in the world, will someday overtake the output of the United States if the latter does not stop "infighting."

The billionaire entrepreneur, speaking on a podcast on Monday evening, said that people would see China, for the first time that anyone can remember who is alive, become twice the economy of the U.S. The Tesla CEO said that it was entirely possible for the Asian nation's economy to be three times the size of the American economy.

China vs. American Economy

Musk continued to say that the U.S. should stop what he called infighting or punching itself in the face. The world's richest man said that way too much of America was just being against itself to even think about competing with China. He encouraged the U.S. to step up its games to have a chance.

Last year, the total economic output of the United States was roughly $23 trillion, based on data from the Bureau of Economic Analysis. On the other hand, China's GDP was about $17.1 trillion during the same period, based on the country's National Bureau of Statistics, as per Fox Business.

Musk was asked how he thinks politics must be dealt with in the workplace, and he responded by saying that American CEOs should focus on their business instead. The Tesla CEO said that the company's point was to produce useful products and services for fellow human beings and was not some "political gathering place."

The electric car manufacturer Tesla, which has its headquarters in Austin, Texas, has extensive operations within China. Chinese customers were responsible for purchasing roughly half of the 935,222 vehicles that the company sold last year. Musk sees the Asian nation as being responsible for about 25% to 30% of Tesla's market long-term.

According to the New York Post, Musk has been effusive in his praise of China's working group, saying earlier this month that the Asian country has a lot of "super-talented, hard-working people." He further noted that he was expecting China to produce "very strong companies" that will be able to compete with Tesla in the electric vehicle sector.

Elon Musk Urges US To Stop 'Infighting'

The billionaire entrepreneur then added that in America, people were simply trying to avoid going to work at all. Musk's extensive business operations in China have caused concern among U.S. lawmakers. Some are questioning whether or not the Chinese government could gain access to classified information on SpaceX, which is a federal government contractor.

The situation comes amid Musk's takeover of social media giant Twitter, which faces issues with bots and a huge debt burden. The world's richest man is believed to be directing his buyer's remorse at the company's bot problem but underpinning that the deal is a $13 billion debt that is looking to be a bigger burden every day.

The deal was drummed up in a rush and signed by banks before the end of the Tesla CEO's beloved Apr. 20 weed holiday. It will cause the social media platform to have an annual interest expense that is nearing $1 billion, giving the company an alarmingly small margin of error, Yahoo Finance reported.