By Björn Jeffery, SvD Tech Brief. Published in Svenska Dagbladet on 2 April 2025.
Elon Musk may be on his way out from Donald Trump’s side, but both will want to present the collaboration as a success. Going forward, Musk can be deployed — or sidelined — in whatever measure is deemed most useful to Trump.
Most people have seen it as only a matter of time before one of two things would happen: either Elon Musk would end up on a collision course with Donald Trump and come to be seen as a problem, or Musk’s companies would be hit so hard that he would be forced to focus on them.
Both of these things appear to have happened simultaneously.
The extremely expensive judicial election in Wisconsin — in which Musk handed out cheques of one million dollars to selected voters — did not go his way. The Republican candidate lost. One way to interpret this is that Musk’s popularity is not as great as Trump may have hoped. Having very large amounts of money to spend on American elections is certainly helpful, but it is evidently not always sufficient.
The other thing that happened was that Tesla reported its sales figures. The number of cars it delivered to customers was the lowest since 2022 — well below analysts’ estimates. The share price has also fallen around 30 percent since the start of the year. Elon Musk is accustomed to doing largely what he wants, but these are numbers that even he should be reacting to — especially since Tesla’s difficulties are to a significant extent bound up with Musk himself and his political involvement.
Musk is the single largest shareholder in Tesla, but he is not the only one. The company is publicly listed and several voices have been raised asking why a company with such obvious problems does not have a CEO who devotes all his time to solving them. Any other CEO would have been dismissed by the board long ago. But not Musk. He is not entirely immune, however. The majority of his wealth consists of Tesla shares, so his interests are closely tied to the company.
Beyond the Wisconsin election and Tesla’s difficulties, the DOGE project has also progressed some distance. Units have been scrapped, thousands of employees dismissed, and entire operations wound down. At some point, it becomes impossible to cut further without shutting down every department entirely. Being able to point to some form of partial victory is likely an incentive for Musk, even if the cuts fall far short of what he promised before the election. Such a partial victory is something he can now claim.
Another factor is that Musk holds the status of “special government employee,” which means he is temporarily exempt from rules on conflicts of interest and the like. This status will expire in May or June, according to Politico — which would in any case need to mark some form of change in his assignment.
Both Trump and Musk will be keen to make the collaboration look like a success. A fairly safe prediction is that they will both declare victory on the spending cuts, after which Musk will transition into a more advisory role. There he can be deployed — or sidelined — in whatever measure is judged to be most advantageous to Trump and his objectives.
Elon Musk will need to work hard to restore the trust of the market and consumers in Tesla. The electric vehicle market is undergoing enormous change and is on the verge of becoming extremely competitive, with major Chinese players pressing forward. And that was before Musk threw himself into politics and alienated prospective Tesla buyers. He faces — to put it mildly — a significant challenge ahead, and is unlikely to have any trouble filling his days once his formal political assignment comes to an end.
