If he weren’t mixing geopolitics with business, he wouldn’t be Elon Musk. 

The world’s richest man has been engaged in an intense fight with a Brazilian supreme court judge, who ordered that X (née Twitter) be banned in the country. The fight with Brazil has highlighted how Musk’s interlocking array of companies can put him in a difficult geopolitical spot, as it spilled over into his satellite internet company Starlink. As Musk’s affiliation with the Trump campaign grows deeper, that political complexity could get more and more difficult to navigate.

Man of the World

For all his bluster, Musk is fairly selective when it comes to picking fights. He has railed against Brazil’s ban on X, saying that it constitutes gross state overreach and a suppression of freedom of speech. There are arguments to support that point of view, but Musk has been conspicuously demure about China’s ongoing ban on the platform, and has dutifully complied with censorship requests from Turkey and India.

This tells you a little something about Musk’s political positioning — and a lot about how vital China is to the success of Tesla. Musk achieved an extraordinary coup this year by getting China to let him roll out Tesla’s driver-assistance software in the country, which will reportedly come next year. But as Musk aligns more closely with with Donald Trump, the rapport he’s worked so hard to establish in the Middle Kingdom could come under threat:

• Trump announced last week that, if elected president again, he would create a “government efficiency commission” and said Musk had agreed to lead it. Musk has been at the heart of a Trump government before (he sat on two advisory councils), but he publicly resigned in response to the former president’s decision to withdraw the US from the Paris Agreement on climate change.
• Sitting close to Trump, whose administration got into a trade war with China, could position him far less favorably when dealing with the government there. Tesla is already facing stiff competition in the Chinese EV market from rivals that benefit from huge state subsidies.

In a Pickle: Last week, X lost a significant member of its geopolitical firefighting team. Nick Pickles, the company’s vice president of global affairs, left the company after 10 years. Pickles, who said his departure had been in the works for a few months, was promoted to his most recent role in June.

Move over, Norway; step aside, Saudi Arabia. The United States wants in on the sovereign wealth fund game.

White House officials are drafting plans to start a US sovereign wealth fund that could invest in national security interests like technology and energy firms, sources told Bloomberg. Donald Trump is on board with the concept too.

Lady Sovereign Liberty

Foreign countries have used sovereign wealth funds — basically, state-owned investment funds with returns that go back to their country — to become major international investors and buttress projects at home. Norway’s $1.7 trillion Government Pension Fund, set up in 1990 to invest oil revenue surpluses, held 1.5% of all the world’s listed companies as of last month. Saudi Arabia’s $925 billion Public Investment Fund has made notable investments abroad, including a 5% stake in Uber, but has also kept nearly two-thirds of its financing activities at home in order to spur local projects and infrastructure.

Details of what an American equivalent would look like remain fuzzy. Sources told Bloomberg the White House has yet to settle on a proposal for the fund’s “structure, funding model, and investment strategy,” while Trump, speaking at the New York Economic Club last week, only said that a US fund should support “great national endeavors.” Some economists, on the other hand, have their doubts:

• Former Treasury secretary and Harvard economist Larry Summers told Bloomberg TV that a wealth fund might make more sense “if you’re Norway or the Emirates — that has this huge natural resource that’s going to run out that you’re exporting — to accumulate a big wealth fund.” He also noted the US trade deficit, which stood at $79 billion in July, would pose an obstacle.
• Jared Bernstein, who chairs the White House’s Council of Economic Advisers, told Bloomberg TV he worries a fund could be exploited by presidents for political purposes, adding he is “very wary of getting involved in any kind of wealth fund.” He also noted US deficits, fueling the $35 trillion national debt, would make financing any fund a challenge.

Game Time: In one notable example of a top government official apparently influencing a wealth fund, the Saudi PIF took 5% stakes in gaming companies Capcom and Nexon — Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman is reportedly an avid gamer.

Here are two words that have not appeared in any news story about Boeing this summer: crisis averted.

On Sunday, the beleaguered (to say the least) plane-maker reached a tentative deal with the union representing its production workers in Washington state, likely dodging a strike that would have been (again, to say the least) incredibly untimely.

Gonna Fly Now

Boeing has had plenty on its plate this year, and negotiations with the International Association of Machinists and Aerospace Workers (IAM) — the first since 2014 — have been looming in the background. In 2014, just six years after workers had embarked on an eight-week strike, they narrowly voted through a controversial new eight-year contract extension, from 2016 through 2024, that included higher healthcare costs and the loss of defined-benefit pensions.

This time around, with Boeing desperate to achieve escape velocity from its unending PR death spiral, IAM leaders have a little something they like to call “leverage.” And they made sure to capitalize on their unique opportunity:

• The four-year contract includes a 25% wage increase over the life of the deal, which the company said is its “largest-ever general wage increase,” and includes greater contributions to both healthcare costs and retirement funds.
• The deal also includes language guaranteeing that the manufacturing of any new commercial jet plane launched over the course of the contract would be based in the Puget Sound region. In 2014, Boeing scored union concessions by threatening to move production of the 777X away from the area.

The union called the tentative agreement “the best contract we’ve negotiated in our history,” and recommended the 33,000 workers in the district approve it in a vote scheduled for Thursday. It needs a simple majority to pass.

Safety First: IAM did miss in its quest to secure a board seat for workers, but it scored an annual meeting with the company’s safety committee and a semi-annual meeting with CEO Kelly Ortberg to discuss safety issues as a concession. All in all, we’ll call this a win, win, win: Workers got a raise, Boeing avoided a strike, and we, the passengers, hopefully have slightly safer giant metal tubes to launch us across the skies.