International

By John Pickard

Elon Musk, the unelected supremo of the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), is creating chaos in US federal agencies. That is in addition to the mayhem his boss, Trump, is creating in international relations. But there may be some good news on the way – Musk’s far-right politicial outlook and his savaging of the federal payroll might be creating a backlash against the main base of his wealth, Tesla.

Apart from supporting The Donald, Musk has supported every far right political party to appear on his radar – Reform UK here (although Farage, apparently,  was not right-wing enough after he disowned Tommy Robinson), Vox in Spain, and the AfD in Germany, for example. He has stuck his nose into the issue of child-sex grooming gangs in Britain, even suggesting that Labour MP, Jess Phillips, “deserves to be in prison” and writing that she was a “rape genocide apologist” because she rejected Musk’s call for a national investigation. And all of this was before his Nazi salutes at a Trump rally.

Now, to universal cheers in the labour movement, the Guardian reports that there has been a reaction to Musk’s toxic politics in the form of a collapse in Tesla car sales. “Data released on Thursday”, the Guardian reported, “showed that registrations of the company’s electric cars in Germany fell 76% to 1,429 last month. Overall, electric vehicle registrations rose by 31%”.

As recently as last October, Musk was telling shareholders that he expected an increase is Tesla sales this year, of anything between 20% to 30%. The reality is proving to be somewhat different. After having seen uninterrupted growth in sales, making Tesla one of the biggest car companies in the world – and the biggest seller of EVs – sales are turning down in 2025 for the first time since 2011,

Unions protesting outside Tesla showrooms

In Europe and in the USA workers protesting against Musk are targetting Tesla showrooms. In the USA, the protesters include trade unionists whose jobs are threatened by the scorched-earth ‘economies’ introduced in federal agencies by the DOGE.

In the UK, Tesla sales figures are holding up, year on year, but Tesla market share for EV sales in January/February 2025, fell from 14% to 11%, in 2024.

A report in the Financial Times a week ago noted, “Of all the Trump trades to hit the skids, Tesla stands out. The share price of Elon Musk’s electric vehicle company has plummeted from a post-election high of nearly $480 to less than $282 last week. The fall has been so precipitous that last Thursday, the American Federation of Teachers, a US union representing members with $4tn in retirement investments, called on six large money managers — BlackRock, Vanguard, State Street, T Rowe Price, Fidelity and TIAA — to reconsider their position in the company”.

“Musk’s political antics have devalued his brand in many parts of the world”, the report continued, “Sales in Europe crashed after he announced support for Germany’s far-right AfD party. A Dutch pension fund divested from Tesla in protest early in January. Tesla owners in France, Norway and the UK are snapping up bumper stickers that read: ‘I bought this before we knew Elon was crazy.’”

Tesla sales already affected by his management of ‘X’

And falls in Tesla sales are not just in Europe. In Australia, the Guardian reported, Tesla sales last month were down around 72% compared to February last year. Strategic Vision, a polling company in the USA, reports that “While Tesla remains beloved by many owners, its sales have dipped, influenced by Elon Musk’s polarizing presence and the brand’s evolving identity”.

The Guardian, picking up on Strategic Vision’s data, noted that “approximately half of non-Tesla EV buyers identify as Democrat or liberal, compared with about 20% identifying as Republican or conservative. Among Tesla owners, the Democrat owner group has fallen from 40% during the Biden administration to 29% now, with the Republican group averaging about 30% since 2021”.

It is not only about the DOGE. The decline began when Musk took over Twitter, changd the name to ‘X’ and made it an open platform for far-right demogoges and anyone willing to tell lies big enough. Now, according to the president of Strategic Vision, “Democrats, the majority party of EV owners, are now actively rejecting Tesla and choosing other options”

The implications of the fall in sales are obvious, of course – in the fall in share value. After the election in November, Tesla shares rose, with the company valued at about $840bn. There are some optimists who still think the share value can double and the company valuation can go up to $2tn. But there are also serious economic players who think the opposite.

JP Morgan, for example, suggests that  “Tesla shares continue to strike us as having become completely divorced from the fundamentals” and they suggest that the share price could fall as low as $135, less than half its current value. Some analysts were already wondering if Tesla shares were already over-priced and that the company has “peaked”. “The worry for Tesla investors”, as the Guardian journalist noted, “is whether Musk has turned that peak into a cliff-edge.”

Musk owns only just over an eighth of Tesla shares. We will see what happens if the share price and valuation do indeed fall off a cliff. It would knock a big hole in Musk’s personal fortune and puncture his political balloon.

So here’s hoping…

[Photographs from Wikimedia Commons]