Billionaire tells Dubai audience ‘if you don’t remove the roots of the weed, then it’s easy for the weed to grow back’

• US politics live – latest updates

Elon Musk said on Thursday that the US should “delete entire agencies” from the federal government as a part of his extraordinary strategy under the Trump administration to make huge cost cuts with the stated goal of boosting efficiency.

Musk made the latest suggestion on a video call to the World Governments Summit in Dubai, United Arab Emirates, in response to a question about what changes he planned to execute under Donald Trump’s direction.