Tesla sinks after Trump threatens to have “DOGE take a good, hard, look” at Musk subsidies
Elon Musk and Donald Trump are fighting in public again.
It appears Tesla CEO Elon Musk has sufficiently poked the bear — again.
President Donald Trump took to his social media platform in the middle of the night to criticize Musk’s government subsidies, threatening to have the government organization — which, until very recently, Musk ran — look into cutting them.
“Elon may get more subsidy than any human being in history, by far, and without subsidies, Elon would probably have to close up shop and head back home to South Africa,” Trump wrote. “Perhaps we should have DOGE take a good, hard, look at this? BIG MONEY TO BE SAVED!!!” the president added.
Tesla plummeted as low as 6% in overnight trading but is now trading about 5% lower in the premarket.
The post comes after a slew of posts by Musk on his social media platform criticizing Trump’s “big, beautiful bill.” In one of the posts, Musk renewed his threat from the last time he and Trump publicly battled online to start his own political party if the bill goes through.
The tax bill is expected to have huge negative implications for Tesla, which has been on a tear since reporting earnings in late April, rising nearly 40% on optimism around its robotaxi launch. JPMorgan has said the pending legislation could eat into more than half of the EV company’s profits.
Tesla potentially has more tangible things to worry about: it’s reporting second-quarter deliveries tomorrow and analysts expect the numbers to be very bad.
