内容摘要：Decisions like cutting winter fuel payments for pensioners seem to have harmed his standing and that policy is to be revised, perhaps as early as next week.

Decisions like cutting winter fuel payments for pensioners seem to have harmed his standing and that policy is to be revised, perhaps as early as next week.

Musk claimed on Thursday that the president won the election because of him, and complained about "ingratitude".There's an obvious counterexample. Earlier this year Musk shovelled $20m into a key judicial race in Wisconsin, however, his chosen Republican candidate lost by 10 percentage points in a state Trump won last November.

Still, Musk's donations are a huge chunk of money that Republicans will miss as they try to hold their congressional advantage in the midterm elections in November 2026.It may have been a problem they were facing in any case. Musk has previously said he would contribute a "lot less" to campaigns in the future.But could the bust-up with the White House prompt Musk not just to withdraw but throw his money behind opposition to Trump?

He hinted as such on Thursday when he posted a poll on X with the question: "Is it time to create a new political party in America that actually represents the 80% in the middle?"Musk's companies including SpaceX, its subsidiary Starlink and Tesla do a huge amount of business with the US government.

SpaceX alone has been

, according to analysis by BBC Verify.The US has accused China of failing to restart shipments of critical minerals and rare earth magnets vital to car and computer industries.

The Chinese Ministry of Commerce has denied the claims and accused the US of undermining the deal by introducing new restrictions on computer chips.Trump introduced new export restrictions on semiconductor design software and announced it would revoke the visas of Chinese students.

The US president said following the call that "there should no longer be any questions respecting the complexity of Rare Earth products".He told reporters in the White House: "Chinese students can come, no problem, no problem - its an honour to have them frankly. But we want to check them."