I think Tesla is increasingly beholden to China,” Ramaswamy said in 2023. “I have no reason to think Elon won’t jump like a circus monkey when Xi Jinping calls in the hour of need.” In another 2022 interview,

CNN’s KFile dug into Ramaswamy’s long history of attacking Musk, calling him a “circus monkey,” saying his company Tesla is “beholden” to the communist state, and that “Tesla and SpaceX quite likely would not exist as successful businesses if it were not for the use of public funding.