French President Emmanuel Macron on Wednesday he stated the state support for Elon Musk‘s Starlink as a case for public investment in European industry, prompting a response from the world’s richest man after he called it “oversubsidised”.

Speaking at an industry summit in the Belgian city of Antwerp, Macron advocated a “Buy European” approach to competitiveness and massive investment partly financed by joint borrowing by European Union.

“If you look at the US, you have a lot of private money … but you also have a lot of public money,” he said.

“Everybody’s fascinated by Starlink… But if you’re lucid, Mr. Musk is probably one of the guys in the world who had the most… billions of American taxpayer dollars in his pockets to be subsidized,” he added.

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“Elon Musk is the first guy to be oversubsidized by a federal agency in the US,” he said, calling the approach “super-innovative.”

The French leader has previously said that more common EU debt is “the only way” to compete economically with rivals such as the US and China.

Musk quickly hit back on X, the social media platform he owns, at Macron’s remarks about him, replying that European countries subsidize their industries more than the US.

“If you add up all state funds Tesla and SpaceX ever received, that’s only about 1% of the combined value of the companies,” he said.

“By contrast, if you do this with the US and European major airlines, the government money they received *exceeds* 100% of their value!”

(FRANCE 24 with AFP)