Speaking at an industrial summit in the Belgian city of Antwerp, Macron argued for a "Buy European" competitiveness approach, and for massive investment partly financed through joint borrowing by the European Union.

"If you look at the US, you have a lot of private money... but you have a lot of public money" too, he said.

"Everybody is fascinated by Starlink... But if you are lucid, Mr. Musk is probably one of the guys of the world who has had in his pockets the most... billions dollars of the American taxpayers in order to be subsidised," he added.

"Elon Musk is first an oversubsidised guy by the federal agency in the US," he said, calling the approach "super-innovative".

The French leader earlier said that more joint EU debt was the "only way" to compete on an economic level 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, responding that Europe's states subsidised its industries more than the US did.

"If you add up all the government funding Tesla and SpaceX have ever received, it is only about 1% of the combined value of the companies," he said.

"In contrast, if you do that with US and European major aerospace companies, the government money they have received *exceeds* 100% of their value!"

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