Will Musk's explosive row with Trump help or harm his businesses?

BBC News

15 hours ago

When Elon Musk recently announced that he was stepping back from politics, investors hoped that would mean he would step up his involvement in the many tech firms he runs.His explosive row with President Donald Trump - and the very public airing of his dirty White House laundry - suggests Musk's changing priorities might not quite be the salve they had been hoping for.Instead of Musk retreating somewhat from the public eye and focusing on boosting the fortunes of Tesla and his other enterprises, he now finds himself being threatened with a boycott from one of his main customers - Trump's federal government.
Tesla shares were sent into freefall on Thursday - falling 14% - as he sounded off about President Donald Trump on social media.They rebounded a little on Friday following some indications tempers were cooling.Even so, for the investors and analysts who, for months, had made clear they wanted Musk off his phone and back at work, the situation is far from ideal.
'They're way behind'
Some though argue the problems for Musk's businesses run much deeper than this spat - and the controversial role in the Trump administration it has brought a spectacular end to.For veteran tech journalist Kara Swisher, that is especially so for Tesla."Tesla's finished," she told the BBC on the sidelines of the San Francisco Media Summit early this week. "It was a great car company. They could compete in the autonomous taxi space but they're way behind."
Tesla has long attempted to play catch-up against rival Waymo, owned by Google-parent Alphabet, whose driverless taxis have traversed the streets of San Francisco for years - and now operate in several more cities.This month, Musk is supposed to be overseeing Tesla's launch of a batch of autonomous robo-taxis in Austin, Texas.He posted to X last week that the electric vehicle maker had been testing the Model Y with no drivers on board."I believe 90% of the future value of Tesla is going to be autonomous and robotics," Wedbush Securities analyst Dan Ives told the BBC this week, adding that the Austin launch would be "a watershed moment"."The first task at hand is ensuring the autonomous vision gets off to a phenomenal start," Ives added.Who is Elon Musk?How the Trump-Musk feud eruptedBut with Musk's attention divided, the project's odds of success would appear to have lengthened.And there's something else to factor in too: Musk's own motivation.The talk in Silicon Valley lately centres less on whether Musk can turn things around and more on whether he even cares."He's a really powerful person when he's focused on something," said Ross Gerber, President and CEO of Gerber Kawasaki Wealth and Investment Management."Before, it was about proving to the world that he would make EVs - the tech that nobody else could do. It was about proving he could make rockets. He had a lot to prove."A longtime Tesla investor, Gerber has soured on the stock, and has been pairing back his holdings since Musk's foray into right-wing politics. He called Thursday an "extremely painful day.""It's the dumbest thing you could possibly do to think that you have more power than the president of the United States," Gerber said, referring to Musk's social media tirade against Trump.The BBC reached out to X, Tesla, and SpaceX seeking comment from Mr Musk but did not receive a response.
The Tesla takedown
A particular problem for Musk is that, before he seemingly created an enemy in Donald Trump, he already had one in the grassroots social media campaign against his car-maker.Protests, dubbed #TeslaTakedown, have played out across the country every weekend since Trump took office.In April, Tesla reported a 20% drop in car sales for the first three months of the year. Profits plunged more than 70%, and the share price went down with it."He should not be deciding the fate of our democracy by disassembling our government piece by piece. It's not right," protestor Linda Koistinen told me at a demonstration outside a Berkeley, California Tesla dealership in February.Koistinen said she wanted to make a "visible stand" against Musk personally."Ultimately it's not about the tech or the Tesla corporation," said Joan Donovan, a prominent disinformation researcher who co-organized the #TeslaTakedown protests on social media."It's about the way in which the stock of Tesla has been able to be weaponized against the people and it has put Musk in such a position to have an incredible amount of power with no transparency," Donovan added.Another aspect of Musk's empire that has raised the ire of his detractors is X, the social media platform once known as Twitter."He bought Twitter so that he had clout and would be able to - at the drop of a hat - reach hundreds of millions of people," Donovan said.
The personal brand
There is another possibility here though.Could Musk's high-profile falling out with Trump help rehabilitate him in the eyes of people who turned against him because of his previous closeness to the president?Patrick Moorhead, chief analyst at Moor Insights & Strategy, thinks it could."We're a very forgiving country," Moorhead says in a telephone interview."These things take time," he acknowledges, but "it's not unprecedented".Swisher likened Musk's personal brand to that of Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates more than two decades ago.She said Gates was once regarded as "the Darth Vader of Silicon Valley" because of his "arrogant and rude" personality.Today, despite his flaws, Gates has largely rehabilitated his image."He learned. He grew up. People can change," Swisher told me, even though Musk is "clearly troubled."
Space exit
The problem for Musk is the future for him and his companies is not just about what he does - but what Trump decides too.And while Trump needed Musk in the past, not least to help fund his presidential race, it's not so clear he does now.Noah Smith, writer of the Noahpinion Substack, said Trump's highly lucrative foray into cryptocurrencies - as unseemly as it has been - may have freed him from depending on Musk to carry out his will."My guess is that this was so he could get out from under Elon," Smith said.In Trump's most menacing comment of the day, he suggested cutting Musk's government contracts, which have an estimated value of $38 billion.A significant chunk of that goes to Musk's rocket company SpaceX - seemingly threatening its future.However, despite the bluster, Trump's warning may be a little more hollow than it seems.That's because SpaceX's Dragon spacecraft ferries people and cargo to the International Space Station where three NASA astronauts are currently posted.It demonstrates that SpaceX has so entrenched itself in the US space and national security apparatus, that Trump's threat could be difficult to carry out.You could make a similar argument about Musk's internet satellite company, Starlink. Finding an alternative could be easier said than done.But, if there are limits on what Trump can do, the same is also true of Musk.In the middle of his row with Trump, he threatened to decommission the Dragon - but it wasn't long before he was rowing back.Responding to an X user's suggestion he that he "cool down" he wrote, "Good advice. Ok, we won't decommission Dragon."It's clear Musk and Trump's friendship is over. It's less certain their reliance on each other is.Whatever the future for Musk's businesses is then, it seems Trump - and his administration's actions - will continue to have a big say in them.
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