President-elect Donald Trump’s nomination for U.S. Transportation Secretary has claimed that should he be confirmed, he will allow the department’s various probes into Tesla to continue.
During a confirmation hearing in Washington D.C. on Wednesday, Sean Duffy, who is a former Republican congressman and lobbyist, claimed that he would allow the regulatory process to work itself out when it came to the car company owned by Trump’s buddy and political benefactor, Elon Musk.
“Yes, I commit to this committee and to you that I will let NHTSA do their investigation,” he said. “I think I also mentioned to you that a lot of the players in these spaces, I haven’t met any of them.”
In addition to claiming he’d allow the government to continue looking into Tesla’s various safety and regulatory issues, Duffy also claimed that autonomous vehicles needed to be regulated properly at the national level because, he said, it is a technology with big “national security” implications. “We can’t fall behind China or other countries as it comes to AV technology,” Duffy said. “I believe there has to be a federal law by which all of these innovators can abide by it, no matter if they’re in Texas or in California or somewhere else.”
Duffy also promised to treat Boeing with “tough love.” The aviation giant has been rocked by scandal and controversy over the past year, as a series of whistleblowers have alleged huge gaps in the company’s safety procedures and culture.
Of course, just because Duffy is saying all this right now, there’s little to stop him from changing his mind once he gets into office. When you’re trying to get your nomination confirmed, it helps to sound like you’re not going to do anything openly corrupt while on the job.
Musk has invested quite a bit of time and money into Donald Trump and, one would assume, he’s probably going to want a certain return on his investment. Prior to becoming Trump’s unofficial campaign manager, Musk’s businesses were suffering from a plague of regulatory scrutiny (they still are, though some have predicted that those investigations could be nixed, now that Trump is headed to the White House). The latest safety investigation into Musk’s car company began just a week ago.
Duffy, like a lot of Trump’s nominations, has worked for Fox News. He is also a former reality TV star, having starred on The Real World: Boston. NPR notes that while Duffy actually has considerable experience working in government (unlike, say, the guy that Trump picked to run the Pentagon), he doesn’t really have much experience in transportation outside of a brief stint on MTV’s Road Rules: All Stars.
