It took only a few hours to wipe $152 billion of value from Tesla’s market cap and more than $100 million in value from TrumpCoin.
The end of the bromance between Elon Musk and President Donald Trump has been brewing for weeks, but on Thursday the breakup went nuclear. Musk took to the platform he owns, X, to lambast Trump’s “One Big Beautiful Bill,” which includes provisions that restrict immigration, limit green energy subsidies, and is estimated to increase the US deficit by $2.4 trillion. Trump shot back on Truth Social, the platform he owns, to say that Musk is against the bill only because it would take away electric vehicle tax credits that Musk’s company, Tesla, benefits from. It quickly devolved into dozens of posts, most of them from Musk, who claimed Trump is in the Epstein Files—which is, he claims, why they haven’t been made public.
Tesla’s stock is down roughly 14 percent at the time of writing, which is the biggest single-day hit to its market cap in years. Trump’s crypto coin is down nearly 10 percent.
This is a high-stakes divorce for everyone involved. Trump claimed he would terminate Musk’s governmental subsidies and contracts, which help rake in billions of dollars for companies like Tesla and SpaceX. In return, Musk posted that he would decommission SpaceX’s Dragon spacecraft, which is used by NASA to transport cargo and astronauts to the International Space Station, “immediately.” Steve Bannon, a Trump ally and vocal critic of Musk, told The New York Times that he “is advising the president to cancel all of Musk’s contracts and launch several investigations.”
“They should initiate a formal investigation of his immigration status because I am of the strong belief that he is an illegal alien, and he should be deported from the country immediately,” Bannon said. It has been reported that Musk may have lied on his visa forms, which would likely have made it illegal for him to work in the United States in the 1990s.
Tesla’s stock drop comes at a delicate time for the electric-vehicle maker. This month, the company is due to debut its long-awaited (and much-delayed) robotaxi service in Austin, Texas. Musk has said that investors should think of Tesla as a robotics and autonomous vehicle technology company rather than an electric automaker—putting its self-driving tech and humanoid robot ambitions, rather than new car models, at the center of its now $916 billion market capitalization. Bloomberg reported that the company has internally targeted next week for a launch. Musk has repeatedly claimed that his AI company, xAI, would also soon release a new model, though the launch has been delayed.
Tesla’s latest quarterly results, posted in April, were its worst in years as production, deliveries, and sales fell, particularly in Europe. The company has scaled down its ambitions to produce a more affordable electric vehicle, nixing plans to use new and advanced manufacturing techniques. Musk attempted to placate worried investors by announcing that he would leave his so-called Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) post and return to his companies, including Tesla, mostly full-time.
Musk denied Thursday that his about-face on Trump has anything to do with electric vehicle subsidies. Musk has maintained since he joined Trump’s campaign that Tesla does not need federal tax credits, which can reach $7,500 per car, to sell its vehicles. But in an X post, Musk betrayed the first inklings of annoyance with Trump’s EV policy. “Keep the EV/solar incentive cuts in the bill, even though no oil & gas subsidies are touched (very unfair!!), but ditch the MOUNTAIN of DISGUSTING PORK in the bill,” he wrote.
Since February, thousands of protesters opposing Musk’s and Trump’s politics—everything from their climate stances to the actions of DOGE—have gathered outside of Tesla showrooms and service centers across the world. What began as a grassroots movement now has a central organization and a name: the Tesla Takedown. On Thursday afternoon, organizers put out a three-word statement: “Sell, Sell, Sell.”
