This analysis was first published in SvD Näringsliv, in Swedish, on June 6th, 2025. This piece was translated from Swedish by Claude. Some phrasing may differ from a human translation.
Is it over between Elon Musk and Donald Trump for good? And what does the fight mean for Tesla? Here we answer four questions about the poisoned situation in the US.
Musk has just stepped down from the assignment of leading DOGE, an initiative aimed at finding savings and cuts within the machinery of government. Shortly afterwards, Donald Trump’s reform package the “Big Beautiful Bill” was passed by the House of Representatives and sent on to the Senate.
DOGE itself claims the organization has so far saved around 180 billion dollars for the American state — figures that have been strongly disputed by many. This, potentially hypothetical, saving was supposed to ease the American national debt. Trump’s “Big Beautiful Bill” would, by contrast, increase the national debt by 2,400 billion dollars, according to independent calculations. Musk’s work with DOGE would thus be completely wiped out — and then some.
Musk called the reform proposal a “disgusting abomination” on X and demanded that it be changed.
According to Politico, the two were to speak on Friday to see if peace could be brokered. Trump himself appeared to torpedo that peace conversation before it had a chance to happen.
Both parties have a great deal to lose from the big fight. At the same time, it was entirely predictable that something like this would happen sooner or later. These are two men with enormous power and ego who at some point were almost inevitably going to end up on a collision course.
That it happened so fast — and escalated so much — was, however, more unexpected. Trump wrote that Musk had “gone crazy” because he removed tax subsidies on electric cars. Musk for his part wrote that the reason the investigation into Jeffrey Epstein has not been made public is that Trump is in it. And all of this happened publicly and openly, on social media.
On Friday afternoon, Donald Trump denied reports that he was to have a phone call with Elon Musk, according to ABC News.
For the situation to be resolved, both parties would need to make some kind of public climb-down. And that is precisely what argues against it happening.
Tesla lost just over 14 percent on the stock market on Thursday as a result of the fight. The company’s share price is, however, volatile, and its investors are used to sharp rises and falls from before. On Friday the share price rose again in New York.
In an ordinary listed company, Thursday’s events would have been a catastrophe. For Tesla, it has happened several times before.
The alliance between Trump and Musk had already been complicated for Tesla before all this. On the one hand, the close association with the world’s most powerful man had brought a great deal of visibility and potential political benefits. On the other hand, many former customers have turned against him and the Tesla brand has suffered.
At the top of Musk’s X profile sits a poll in which he asks his followers “whether it is time to create a new political party in the US that actually represents the 80 percent who are in the middle.” The answer “yes” is leading by a wide margin at the time of writing. The poll does not exactly feel like an obvious overture to a reconciliation between Musk and Trump.
Musk is well aware of the delicate situation he finds himself in, but does not have a history of taking a step back when things get complicated. He has previously transformed both the car industry and space travel. But having the American president as an enemy could turn out to be Musk’s greatest challenge yet.
