- Tesla’s stock has plunged by 42 percent since the beginning of 2025, proving analysts wrong.
- Trump’s Commerce Secretary went on record to praise Musk and urge people to buy Tesla stock.
- The message didn’t get through, as the stock price dropped even lower after this interview.
Tesla is in a very difficult position right now. Since the beginning of the year, its stock price has nosedived by no less than 40 percent, defying analysts’ predictions after Donald Trump’s election win that it would skyrocket. How exactly did that happen?
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Well, it doesn’t take a genius to figure out that Elon Musk‘s role at the new Department Of Government Efficiency, where he pushed for many civil servants to be fired over cost-cutting purposes, and his inflammatory rhetoric on several issues have backfired spectacularly, hurting not just Tesla’s image both in the US and abroad, but also its sales and, consequently, its stock price.
More: Calls For Investigation After Trump’s Commerce Secretary Urges Fox Viewers To Buy Tesla Stock
And let’s not forget Trump’s sweeping 25% auto tariffs, along with the broader reciprocal tariffs affecting roughly 90 countries, which helped send the stock market into a tailspin and didn’t do Tesla any favors either.
A New Political Identity With a Price
Not that long ago, the outspoken CEO identified as a Democrat, even though he had not dipped his toes into politics. That all changed seemingly overnight after he witnessed Trump’s reaction during an assassination attempt – or at least that’s what he said. Now a fully-fledged Republican, or rather staunch MAGA and Donald Trump supporter, he poured $277 million into the latter’s campaign. This seemed to be the best investment Elon has ever made; his net worth exceeded $400 billion after Trump’s election win in November, and he made history as the first individual ever to surpass that figure.
While analysts expected his close relationship with Trump to prove beneficial to his companies and revised their projections for 2025, since January, Tesla’s stock has actually plummeted by 40 percent. That’s because Musk may have become the MAGA crowd’s new darling, but this came at the cost of alienating and even frustrating a lot of people who criticized him for his stance.
Of course, Musk does have a lot of supporters, too, and many of them are currently in high places. One such person is the Trump administration’s Commerce Secretary, Howard Lutnick, who, as reported by the Daily Beast, openly defended both Elon and Tesla. He called Musk “probably the best person to bet on I’ve ever met” on March 19 during an interview with Fox News’ Jesse Watters – but he didn’t stop there.
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“I think if you want to learn something on this show tonight, it’s buy Tesla,” Lutnick said. “It’s unbelievable that this guy’s stock is this cheap.” He then urged viewers to invest in Musk’s company as its stock “will never be this cheap again”.
More: Musk Could Soon Leave Trump’s Administration, But The Drama May Still Follow Tesla
Apparently, a Cabinet member endorsing a private company’s stock and urging the public to put its money on it may or may not be ethically questionable, depending on where you stand in the whole debate, but no matter anyone’s opinion, it did nothing to stop Tesla’s fall.
On Monday, the stock was trading at $214.80, down from $235.86 when Howard Lutnick urged Americans to go all-in on Musk’s car company. At the time of publishing, it had slightly bounced back to $218. Still, that’s a steep drop from $404 on January 1, and even further from this year’s high of $428 on January 15.
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A-List Unsubscribers
While Trump’s Cabinet may try to pump up their President’s new BFF, a lot of high-profile personalities are among his fiercest critics. Acclaimed and hugely successful author Stephen King didn’t mince his words on Musk’s own platform, X, and stated publicly what people were joking about in private:
“You can’t call Elon Musk the President-elect, because he wasn’t elected”, he wrote. “In fact, having been born in Pretoria, he is ineligible to become president. Nonetheless, he is running the show. You know that, but it bears repeating.”
It’s not just King bashing Musk on X, either; many owners have started trading their Teslas for something else in record numbers, either because they’re fed up with Elon’s politics or being targeted by others who spray or vandalize (and occasionally even torch) the EVs just because the company that builds them happens to be owned by Musk.
Moreover, many public figures have vowed to sell their Teslas due to his behavior. According to Business Insider, that list includes actors Bette Midler and Jason Bateman, singer Sheryl Crow, Angel investor Joanne Wilson, podcaster Zach Sang, and Senator Mark Kelly, among others, who have only bad things to say not about the cars, but the man who owns and runs their maker.