Trump creates 'efficiency' department; Elon Musk, Vivek Ramaswamy to lead

US President-elect Donald Trump said on Tuesday Elon Musk and former Republican presidential candidate Vivek Ramaswamy will lead the newly created Department of Government Efficiency.

Musk and Ramaswamy "will pave the way for my Administration to dismantle Government Bureaucracy, slash excess regulations, cut wasteful expenditures, and restructure Federal Agencies," Trump said in a statement.

Trump said their work would conclude by July 4, 2026, adding that a smaller and more efficient government would be a "gift" to the country on the 250th anniversary of the signing of the Declaration of Independence.

The appointments reward two Trump supporters from the private sector.

Musk leads electric car company Tesla, social media platform X and rocket company SpaceX, while Ramaswamy is the founder of a pharmaceutical company who ran for the Republican presidential nomination against Trump and then threw his support behind the former president after dropping out.

Musk gave millions of dollars to support Trump's presidential campaign and made public appearances with him.

Trump had said he would offer Musk, the world's richest person, a role in his administration promoting government efficiency.

The acronym of the new department - DOGE - coincides with the name of the cryptocurrency Dogecoin that Musk promotes.

"This will send shockwaves through the system, and anyone involved in government waste, which is a lot of people!" Musk said, according to Trump's statement, which called the new government initiative "potentially 'The Manhattan Project' of our time," referring to the U.S. plan to build the atomic bomb that helped end World War Two.