In the past six months, Maye Musk, the mother of Elon Musk, has been to China, Kazakhstan and the United Arab Emirates, visits that come as foreign leaders are jockeying for influence over the Trump administration.
Ms. Musk, 76, has for years traveled the world to model, speak and promote her memoir. But lately she seems to be even more in demand, especially outside the United States. And her celebrity has taken on greater significance now that Mr. Musk has considerable influence over how billions of dollars in military spending and foreign aid will get paid out.
In late 2024, she visited China at least four times to endorse or model for seven brands there, including makeup products, down jackets and massage devices. Her visits were promoted by state media outlets, which in the past have quoted her calling for improved ties between the United States and China.
In October, three weeks before the U.S. presidential election, she headlined a forum on women in Kazakhstan, where she spoke about her son’s success, according to Kazinform, a state news agency there.
And in January, the week before Donald J. Trump’s second inauguration, she was in Dubai, speaking at a government conference on influencers with the former Fox News personality Tucker Carlson. Her talk was titled, “How I Raised Three Amazing Children, Including the Richest Man in the World,” according to the state-run Emirates News Agency.
All of these trips were taken after Mr. Musk became a staunch supporter of Mr. Trump’s campaign, and on several of them, she waded into U.S. politics.
Several of the countries where she recently appeared have concerns to press in Washington.
Beijing opposes newly announced U.S. tariffs on its goods, and leaders there appear to see Mr. Musk, who himself has extensive business interests in China, as a potential ally. Kazakhstan is hoping that the Trump administration will end restrictions on trade. And the United Arab Emirates buys weapons from Washington and has spent hundreds of millions on lobbyists and donations to think tanks.
Ms. Musk has long traveled extensively for work, both within the United States and overseas. But her activities in China have intensified in recent months, a review of her social media posts over the past four years by The New York Times found. She endorsed five Chinese brands last year, while the year before, she traveled to China mostly to promote her book and for modeling work, appearing in one ad.
The Times could not confirm how much Ms. Musk has earned overseas in recent months. Although in her endorsements and speeches she often emphasizes her connection to Mr. Musk, there is no evidence that she has sought to influence U.S. government policy. Nor is there evidence that she has taken work linked to China’s government.
Ms. Musk’s agency, the Los Angeles-based Creative Artists Agency; her manager, Anna Sherman; and a lawyer who has recently worked for Ms. Musk, Doreen Small, did not respond to questions about her international engagements, including how much she has earned for speaking and endorsing products. The five Chinese brands she endorsed last year did not reply to questions about how much she was paid.
Her activities raise the possibility that foreign governments could see her as a conduit to Mr. Musk, said Scott Amey, the general counsel for the Project on Government Oversight, a watchdog group. “The fear is,” he said, “would people be using her to get one degree of separation from her son and two degrees of separation from the Oval Office?”
Mr. Musk is already dogged by ethical concerns stemming from his businesses such as SpaceX, which has billions of dollars in Pentagon contracts. “We don’t need other potential conflicts of interest that involve his family to be added to his long list that already exists,” Mr. Amey said.
The F.B.I. normally scrutinizes the foreign contacts of presidential advisers and their family members before granting security clearances. Contacts from countries seen as potential U.S. adversaries, like China, typically receive more scrutiny.
It is unclear if Ms. Musk or her contacts have been vetted. The White House has said that her son is a “special government employee,” a short-term adviser who is subject to federal ethics law, but has not disclosed his security clearance status. Before joining the U.S. government, he had skirted reporting requirements as a federal contractor.
Mr. Musk and his lawyer, Alex Spiro, did not respond to questions about his clearance status or his mother’s work overseas. He said on X on Feb. 14 that he has had a “top secret clearance for many years.”
It is notable that both Mr. Musk and his mother have interests in China, said Norman Eisen, a former White House ethics counsel in the Obama administration and a founder of the State Democracy Defenders Fund, which is suing Mr. Musk and his team on behalf of current and recently laid-off federal workers. (Mr. Musk’s company, Tesla, makes half its cars in China, for instance.)
But Ms. Musk’s business trips to China and other countries independently deserve attention, Mr. Eisen said. “Given the exceptionally powerful role of Mr. Musk, who may be the single most influential person in the executive branch, even beyond Trump himself, these foreign entanglements are a cause for concern,” he said.
Mr. Musk often appears in public with his mother and, before becoming a government adviser, brought her to business meetings at X, the social media company he owns, according to the book “Character Limit,” by Kate Conger and Ryan Mac, both reporters for The Times. Since the election, she has accompanied him to social events at Mr. Trump’s Mar-a-Lago estate in Florida and defended her son on Fox News.
Ms. Musk, who was born in Canada but raised Mr. Musk and his two younger siblings in South Africa, has modeled for decades. In recent years, however, her career took off in parallel with that of Mr. Musk. Her rise also reflected an effort in fashion to work with models of varying ages and body types.
Ms. Musk, who has an apartment in New York, has modeled for American and European brands, appearing on the cover of Sports Illustrated’s swimsuit edition in 2022.
Recently she has developed a large following in China, where some of her success is tied to being the mother of Mr. Musk, who has star status there. Fans and businesspeople closely track developments in his tech empire and pore over biographies of him, hoping to gain insights.
His mother’s popularity in China comes amid strained relations with the United States, as the threat of still more tariffs and other tensions hang over the relationship.
She has signed copies of her memoir, in which she writes about raising her three children as a single mother, and of surviving domestic abuse (which her former husband has denied). She opened accounts on Chinese social media and has amassed 1.2 million followers across multiple platforms, where fans thank her for being a role model and ask questions about Mr. Musk.
Ms. Musk has visited more than a dozen Chinese cities, graced billboards and magazine covers, and is often invited to speak (in English) at events geared toward women there. Her image “carries an element of successful parenting, attracting a significant number of mothers among her followers,” said Yang Hu, an expert on China’s beauty industry with Euromonitor International, a market research firm.
One of Ms. Musk’s Chinese ad campaigns centers on her being Mr. Musk’s mother. The ad, for a baby care line, shows her encouraging disobedient children, over the text, “No leading figure of our time is raised following rules.”
Three days after the U.S. presidential election, she spoke about her son’s coming government role at an event in Shanghai to promote a mattress brand, saying, “He is definitely going to work on efficiency, but he really likes rockets and cars,” according to a clip posted by a state media outlet.
At New York Fashion Week in February, Ms. Musk modeled for the Chinese brand Juzui. Before taking to the runway, she told Women’s Wear Daily that she wants to explore work in new countries this year.
Eric Lipton contributed reporting. Susan C. Beachy contributed research.
