Despite being far more tariff-resistant, Tesla is falling harder than other carmakers
It’s auto tariffs day, and the one car company that seemingly should be doing well — Tesla — is doing worse than pretty much all of its peers.
The 25% tariffs on imported vehicles went into effect today, but their impact on major carmakers has been surprisingly muted, perhaps because a lot of the concern has been priced in over months of tariff bluster. Ford, General Motors, Honda, and Volkswagen are all trading down, but are doing better than the S&P 500, which is down 4% as of 10 a.m. ET.
It also may be because Canada and Mexico, where many cars sold in the US are produced, have so far escaped new “reciprocal tariffs” that are roiling the markets.
Tesla, which assembles its domestically sold vehicles in the US, avoids today’s tariffs (though it will be affected when the auto parts levies go into effect May 3). Yet it was recently down 5.5%.
Tesla, it seems, has other problems. Those include but are not limited to terrible delivery numbers released yesterday (Tesla bull Dan Ives called them a “disaster on every metric”). Tesla sold about 50,000 fewer vehicles in Q1 than analysts had expected or than it had sold the same quarter a year earlier. That’s the biggest ever year-over-year drop for the electric vehicle company, which has contended with weaker-than-expected sales in the US and abroad, thanks in part to the political machinations of its CEO, Elon Musk.
