Such a drop has not occurred since September 2020. On Wall Street, the highly spectacular breakup of the collaboration between Donald Trump and Elon Musk led Tesla shares to crash. Late afternoon in New York, thirty minutes before the close, the car manufacturer led by Elon Musk lost nearly 17%, before finally settling for a drop of 14.24% for the day, or $152 million in market capitalization.
Tesla's valuation is back below the $1 trillion mark, at $916 billion this Thursday. According to Bloomberg, Elon Musk's fortune fell by $33.9 billion following this open quarrel and its repercussions on the stock market.
Tesla's share price thus wiped out all of its performance recorded over the sessions included May 8th to this Thursday, June 5th. The company remains up compared to its lowest level of the year, last April 8th, but a drop as sharp as that day has not occurred in five years. Tesla shares have lost 24.94% since the beginning of the year. At the same time, the manufacturer is recording its lowest sales figures.
Donald Trump wants to cut all contracts with Elon Musk
On social media or in front of the cameras, the turnaround has given way to an open quarrel. At the White House, during a press conference with the German Chancellor, the American president commented on the departure of the Tesla boss from his administration, indicating that he expected Elon Musk to start speaking ill of him soon.
He added that he was "very disappointed in Elon". Shortly after, he stated that "the White House must cut all contracts with Musk.".
On his Truth Social platform, Donald Trump drove the point home by stating that ending contracts with the billionaire's companies, a former ally, would save the country real money. What may have scared investors was the following statement: "Elon was out of control, I asked him to leave, I took away his mandate that forced everyone to buy electric cars that no one else wanted (which he knew for months I was going to do!) and he went CRAZY!"
Earlier, Elon Musk had pointed to the rise in US debt, suggesting that the administration of the 47th President of the United States was not doing its duty and not fulfilling its promises. At the center of their divorce was the "Trump tax plan," a tax bill pending in the Senate, which would not suit Tesla in view of the withdrawal of subsidies for the purchase of electric cars.
On Truth Social, Donald Trump returned to the subject, indicating that Elon Musk had indeed opposed the project, and that he had appeared "upset." In his defense, the Tesla boss declared in a post on his own platform X: "Without me, Trump would have lost the election."
But the escalation began an hour before the close on Wall Street, when Elon Musk mentioned the Jeffrey Epstein case, concerning the American president, and indicated that Donald Trump had good reasons not to disclose information about it to the public. As a reminder, the legal case refers to that of Jeffrey Epstein, an American financier targeted for child trafficking, prostitution, and sex trafficking, which could implicate other powerful figures from the political, economic, and academic worlds.
Elon Musk challenges Donald Trump with SpaceX
Later in the afternoon, the dispute between the two leaders turned into a trade war when Elon Musk, in retaliation, announced that he was immediately withdrawing SpaceX from American space operations. On X, the French journalist Renaud Pila mentioned the words of another American journalist on television: "Trump will have to ask Putin to repatriate the Americans from the ISS." A reference to the Soyuz spacecraft, the alternative to Crew Dragon for shuttling astronauts.
The implications of the implosion of the Elon-Musk-Donald Trump duo were already evident last weekend, when Donald Trump dismissed the nomination of Jared Isaacman for the position of NASA Administrator. By dismissing the man whose candidacy he himself had announced through his support, the American president was dismissing a close friend of Elon Musk, a client of his company SpaceX in the context of the financing of two space tourism missions.
Speaking of the trade war, the subject of Donald Trump's policy and his customs duties was brought up by Elon Musk, who was quick to comment that "Donald Trump's tariffs will lead to a recession in the second half of the year."
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