Australia and the World Past and Present

Trump and Musk would both agree that they are great businessmen.

Of the two, Musk would probably have a greater claim to possessing business nous than Trump.

Forbes estimates that as of 2 May 2025, Elon was worth around $385.6 billion, over 100 billion dollars in front of the second richest man, Jeff Bezos with $206.9 billion.

So how is it that Trump presided over a global share market crash following the introduction of tariffs on imports into the US while the share price of Musk’s company, Tesla, has recently experienced a drop of over 70%?

Trump’s ‘Liberation Day’ Tariffs came into effect 2 April.

On Friday of the same week, Wall Street saw $US 2.4 trillion erased from the S&P 500.

Loses continued around the world early the following week.

On Monday Germany’s Dax was down 9% and London’s FTSE was down 5%.

Japan’s Nikkei 225 index was down 7.9% and Hong Kong’s Hang Seng was down 13% – the worst lost result since 1997.

There was mass panic amid fears of an all-out trade war with China, the prospect of retaliatory tariffs and a global recession.

Musk started Tesla in 2003 and it is now a company with a market capitalisation of $879 billion.

He started SpaceX in 2002 and it has grown to a valuation of $350 billion.

Back in the early 2000s, Musk asked himself where the world was headed. He settled on the transition of vehicles powered by fossil fuels to vehicles powered by renewables. Also, he was certain that there would be big advances in space technology. So he placed himself in the middle of some big transformations.

Back in October 2024, SpaceX managed to land one of its Starship rockets safely back on terra firma. Anyone watching the event must have been in awe that a rocket so heavy could manage such a soft landing. The technology involved in achieving such a perfect landing is truly amazing.

This was huge breakthrough. Now SpaceX can not only launch rockets, but it can also land them back to an exact location without incident.

Some would have hoped that the CEO of an electric car company would have leaned to the political left. But this has not turned out to be the case. In cheering on Trump and becoming an integral part of the Trump administration, Musk has become associated not only with the right, but the hard right.

Musk jumped over to DOGE and ran around cutting this, that and the other.

Meanwhile the share price of Tesla plummeted. In the latest quarterly report, Tesla recorded a 71% drop in net profit compared to the same time last year.

As a special employee of the US government, Musk has a 130 day cap on the amount of time he can devote to DOGE.

Since the start of this year, Tesla’s share price is down 41%.

There seems that there has been substantial brand damage to the company and it remains to be seen how lasting this damage will be.

Tesla is facing increased competition from other EV manufacturers.

A schism has opened up between Musk, Trump and some of Trump’s other advisors in the White House.

Musk is not a big fan of tariffs.

Tesla has factories in the US, China and Germany. Some argue that Tesla has factories close to their key markets and try to procure as many components as possible in the same country.

Musk’s jump across to Trump’s administration seems to have damaged the reputation of both men – in the short term at least.

It would seem that Musk, Tesla and the US government would all benefit from Musk returning to his day job.