Elon Musk announced that he “regrets” some of the things he said about Trump last week, just as the President is about to crush Tesla with a series of new laws.
Last week, Musk published a series of tweets attacking Trump and the GOP over the “Big Beautiful Bill’. The CEO went as far as claiming that the reason Trump is not releasing the Epstein files is that he is in them.
Trump’s involvement with Epstein has been known for decades, and Musk knew it when he financed Trump’s election.
The President fired back by threatening to cut all contracts and subsidies to Musk’s companies.
It sent Tesla’s stock tumbling, but Musk quickly backed off. He removed most of his posts about Trump and even tweeted a ‘heart emoji’ to the President.
Musk has now completely backed off and tweeted today that he regrets some of his posts about Trump:
The Tesla CEO backing off Trump over the Big Beautiful Bill is likely going to help the GOP getting it through the Senate.
We have already discussed how the bill is likely to severely impact the electric vehicle market in the US, especially Tesla. However, that’s just the beginning. Trump is now preparing to harm Tesla further.
Politico reports that Trump is planning to sign three resolutions passed by Congress to reverse California’s emission rules, which have been adopted by other states (CARB), on Thursday.
The signing would effectively cancel California’s right to see its own stricter vehicle emissions rules.
California has already announced its intention to fight the new resolutions in court once Trump signs them.
Furthermore, Tesla’s June 19 deadline to respond to NHTSA’s request for information about its launch of a robotaxi service in Austin is rapidly approaching.
Tesla was previously thought to be aiming to launch the service in the first half of the month, but Musk said it is now targeting June 22.
NHTSA could effectively shut down Tesla’s planned service before it even gets started, as it is based on Tesla’s “Supervised Full Self-Driving” system, which is currently under investigation by the federal agency.
The timing of Musk’s feud with Trump couldn’t come at a worse time for Tesla.
Electrek’s Take
Musk out chikened out TACO (Trump Always Chickens Out). In my post about the feud, I said that I expected a quick cooldown of the situation, but I didn’t expect Musk to back out like that fully.
I’m not sure if he changed his dosage or if he panicked because Trump made it clear that he would retaliate.
As of last quarter, Tesla’s earnings rely entirely on emission credits. Therefore, this could result in a significant reduction of Tesla’s credits and earnings, especially starting in 2028, if it is against California’s waiver.
Maybe there were direct threats from the Trump admin about the Austin launch. I don’t know, but I hope the regulators do their jobs here because I think this could end very badly.
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