With Telsa profits plummeting and Musk’s own net worth down nearly $200 billion, the full cost of his bet on Donald Trump is coming into focus.
Tesla released its quarterly earnings report on Tuesday, its first since the company’s chief executive, Elon Musk, took up residence in the Trump White House and immediately began trying to fire federal workers, gut regulators, and illegally withhold funding from recipients who are entitled to it. The numbers are, to use a technical term, grim: Tesla’s net income for the first three months of the year was $409 million, down precipitously from $1.4 billion over the same period in 2024. According to The New York Times, things could have been much worse: Had Tesla not been able to supplement its sales by earning $400 million in interest and close to $600 million selling emissions credits, it would have been hundreds of millions of dollars in the red.
