A lot has been written about the budding friendship between President-elect Donald Trump and the world's richest man, Elon Musk.

What seemed like a strange pairing has turned into a job opportunity for Musk and, in the past week, the two have been seen together in Palm Beach, Florida, ringside at an Ultimate Fighting Championship match in New York and eating McDonald's on a jet.

Before the election, Trump announced he would put the South Africa-born Tesla CEO in charge of a government efficiency commission. Last week, Trump made it more concrete and confirmed the new agency will be called the Department of Government Efficiency, or DOGE.

Since it is a new agency, no one really knows what it will do and what authority it will have. In the end, it will likely be a small advisory group that operates outside of the government without any real regulatory authority. What it is likely to have is influence and a loud mouthpiece in the form of Musk.

The Department of Government Efficiency aims to slash the US federal budget — which totals roughly $6.8 trillion (€6.4 trillion) in fiscal 2024 — by $2 trillion in an effort to permanently downsize the federal government by cutting bureaucracy, regulations and wasteful expenditures.

Though Musk is known for cutting costs at his own businesses, reducing federal spending will be a big challenge. The project is supposed to wrap up by July 2026.

Donald Moynihan, a........

© Deutsche Welle