Elon Musk’s relationship with Donald Trump has quickly shifted from cooperation to conflict, as the two exchanged comments earlier today.
Musk’s companies operate in sectors that are either heavily regulated—or, in his view, not regulated enough. His political involvement makes more sense when seen through the lens of shaping policy: he’s pushed for looser regulations around SpaceX, more consistent standards for autonomous vehicles, and more oversight of artificial intelligence.
But after today’s back and forth, Trump is now threatening to eliminate all EV subsidies and cancel SpaceX contracts.
While we don’t usually cover politics, Musk’s recent criticism of Trump’s new spending bill could and likely will negatively affect both Tesla and SpaceX.
The fallout is already impacting Tesla stock, which fell 14.26% today and has dropped another 2% in after hours trading.
Below is a thread outlining the public exchange between Musk and Trump.
On June 3rd, Musk posted a comment to X criticizing Trump’s new bill due to it drastically increasing the nation’s debt.
Today Trump responded on Truth Social saying the bill is necessary to prevent tax increases.
Trump says in an interview that Musk knew the inner workings of the bill, while Musk denies being shown the bill at all.
🚨TRUMP: "I'm very disappointed with Elon. I've helped him a lot. He knew the inner workings of the bill better than anybody sitting here. He had no problem with it. All of a sudden he had a problem & he only developed the problem when he found out we're going to cut EV mandate" pic.twitter.com/aeCcmCAODQ
— DogeDesigner (@cb_doge) June 5, 2025
Trump turns on Musk, and goes back to his anti-EV campaign.
Trump is now threatening to end government contracts for SpaceX, which Musk is calling his bluff on, saying that SpaceX can start decommissioning the Dragon spacecraft immediately.
While we thought this would be the end of political involvement for Musk, he still appears to want to have a larger voice in politics.
It’ll be interesting to see how the Tesla stock reacts tomorrow. We may be in for another rough ride as Trump looks for additional ways to make Musk’s life more difficult. As we saw in the NJ Turnpike case, where Tesla is being forced to decommission all of their Superchargers along the popular route, politics can trump even the best product.
Is it time to create a new political party in America that actually represents the 80% in the middle?
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) June 5, 2025
