How long can Musk count on being White House fixture?
Elon Musk’s mix of wealth and celebrity, combined with his broad array of high-tech businesses around the world (and above it), makes him unlike other businesspeople who seek to curry favor with the White House. His prominent role in President Trump’s administration as de facto head of the Department of Government Efficiency has led some observers to refer to him as the “co-president.”
But the post-election Trump “bump” in Musk’s chief currency, shares in Tesla Inc., evaporated this week. Musk’s proximity to the president provided an initial boost to his fortune, taking it to almost $500 billion in mid-December, according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index. The subsequent slump to $314 billion reflects, in part, the corrosive effect of that proximity on Tesla’s brand. Indications surfaced last week that Musk’s slash-and-burn approach to government efficiency is also angering some in Trump’s cabinet. Put together, these are the first hints of trouble in the defining relationship of our current politics.
Numerous business titans have floated in Trump’s orbit since his ascent to the presidency in 2017. Many have quickly fallen from favor. If Musk were to share that fate, the fact that he has tied his identity and corporate story so tightly to the president would make him and his business empire vulnerable.
Musk remains the richest person in the world despite Tesla’s 40 percent slide this year. But his stake in the electric vehicle maker, the only listed company in a stable that also includes Space Exploration Technologies Corp. and X Holdings Corp., is his most obvious source of personal liquidity. As of about a year ago, Musk had pledged 58 percent of his shares in the company as collateral for loans. When he was buying Twitter Inc., which became X, he sold tens of billions of dollars worth of Tesla shares. Having bounced somewhat off Monday’s low point, Tesla is still highly priced at almost 90 times forward earnings, compared with 21 times for the S&P 500 Index. Some analysts have begun cutting their estimates and price targets ahead of first-quarter results given big drops in vehicle sales in Europe and China.
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