How Trump’s support from Elon Musk could hurt, or help, Tesla

ELON ALMIZCLE The words of some people, President Donald Trump ‘has become the words of some peopleFirst friend. ‘But Trump administration movements to eliminate many EV friendly policies have led some EV investors, analysts and researchers to insist that all this will be disastrous for the company, the largest EV EV manufacturer with much.

More bullish analysts say otherwise: that EMBLE HOUSE OF ALMIZCLE The presence could be a blessing for Tesla, whose future lies in autonomous and robotic driving.

“The story for Tesla in the future is autonomous and robotics, and we have never seen Tesla as a car company,” said Wedbush’s senior analyst Dan Iives.

Having Trump in office“Massively changes the regulatory environment of autonomous vehicles,” he added.

“I think you really have a federal roadmap that will be created, which speaks of our opinion that the bet for the ages was Musk’s commitment to Trump,” he said.

More analysts and bearish investors are not so safe.

The CEO of Gerber Kawasaki, Ross Gerber, is one of them. Gerber told CNBC that his firm has around 280,000 shares of Tesla, which is just over half of what he had at the highest point of the action.

“I don’t see where Tesla is going here, because the fact is that autonomy does not work, it still doesn’t work,” said Gerber. “I literally take my Cybertruck. I can’t drive five minutes without having to disconnect. And then the Waymos are like driving around me like crazy. And I think we are simply there. And I don’t think the hardware will take us there and people are not buying the vehicles. “

People are not buying vehicles, in Gerber’s opinion, due to Trump’s support from Musk and his activity in the White House.

“Elon is probably the most hated person in the world,” he said. “Most people around the world, you know, hate Elon. And the way they get it is in Tesla. And it is something really unfortunate.”

The data show that Tesla sales have fallen in several European countries, up to 60% in Germany in the first two months of 2025 during the same period of the previous year.

Meanwhile, the Trump administration is pointing to policies that have helped EV manufacturers as Tesla. The Administration issued an executive order on January 20 that analyzed “the elimination of unfair subsidies and other market distortions imposed by the poorly conceived government that favor EVs.”

At least a variant of each model that Tesla sells is eligible for federal credit, more than any other car manufacturer.

“If President Trump gets rid of the credit of $ 7,500, each Tesla car only increased by $ 7,500,” said Gordon Johnson of Glj Research. “It doesn’t matter how you turn it. That is a great negative, given, I think 60% of the United States cannot afford an unexpected invoice of $ 600.”

Tesla has made billions selling mandatory government credits to other car manufacturers.

Both at the federal and state level, government rules require that car manufacturers sell a certain percentage of low emission or zero emissions vehicles. If they cannot comply with the fees, they have to buy credits from another car manufacturer who does. Since Tesla only does EV, he has done much of what Gerber calls “free money” that sells these credits to other manufacturers of inherited cars. Tesla obtained more than $ 2.7 billion only from these credits in 2024. Although it is a small part of the revenues of $ 97.7 billion that year, Johnson said that much of Tesla’s free cash flow comes from these credits.

“Our analysis suggests about Tesla’s life, if you eliminate these EV credits, your free cash flow is really negative,” said Johnson.

Trump’s January order also requested a government’s pause on the disbursement of the funds for the load of electric vehicles.

Tesla has received around $ 31 million from National Infrastructure of Electric Vehicles Program, a Federal Program of the Biden era to finance the construction of cargo facilities around the United States, Tesla obtained about 6% of all program funds.

Bulls argues that the disappearance of EV tax credits, regulatory credits and even collect funds, or substantially damaging, or even helping, Tesla eliminating competitors who do not have the scale to build EV in a profitable way.

“Tesla is the only one who earns money,” said Stifel’s managing director Stephen Gengaro. “They can afford to encourage sales and reduce costs.”