Soon after US President Donald Trump backed Elon Musk and showed support for Tesla, the electric carmaker has suffered the biggest erosion of wealth in 2025 so far.
On March 11, Elon Musk’s net worth shrunk by $132 billion, says data from Bloomberg Billionaires Index. On March 10, Tesla was valued at on NASDAQ at $252.49 per share and it plummeted to $222.15 a day later.
In what can be called the worst performance for Tesla stocks since September 2020, Musk lost $29 billion on Monday itself. Barely four months ago in December 2024, Musk’s net worth had peaked by a whopping $486 billion.
The decline in Tesla's market capitalization on Monday eclipsed the $86 billion combined stock market value of Ford Motor and General Motors.
The overall public sentiment is also not in favour of the tech carmaker.
About 350 demonstrators protested outside a Tesla electric vehicle dealership in Portland, Oregon, last week, while nine people were arrested during a raucous demonstration outside a New York City Tesla dealership earlier in March. Musk is spearheading the Trump administration's so-called Department of Government Efficiency, or DOGE.In recent a post on his Truth Social platform, Trump defended Musk by saying he was "putting it on the line” to help the country and was doing a "fantastic" job.
"I'm going to buy a brand new Tesla tomorrow morning as a show of confidence and support for Elon Musk, a truly great American," Trump said.Musk thanked the president for his support on his own social media platform X.
Tesla's market capitalisation has more than halved since hitting an all-time high of $1.5 trillion on December 17, erasing most of the gains the stock made after Musk helped finance the election victory of U.S. President Donald Trump.The stock's decline since December stems from falling vehicle sales and profits, protests of Musk's political activity and investor worries that politics are distracting the world’s richest man from tending to his cash cow.
Bloomberg reports that five of the billionaires who attended Trump's inauguration have lost a combined $210 billion in wealth since then.
The impact of ‘boycott Tesla’
Investors in Tesla have been concerned that Musk's work leading the Department of Government Efficiency to slash government expenditure was distracting him from running his companies, which include Tesla, SpaceX, X and xAI. Fox Business's Larry Kudlow asked him in an interview on Monday about the pressure. "I mean, how are you running your other businesses?" Kudlow asked.
"With great difficulty," Musk replied, with a sigh. After the recent slump in Tesla's shares, the stock has continued to trade at multiples far higher than other automakers, with supporters betting on Musk's promises to deliver self-driving taxis and humanoid robots. More recently, Musk's role in sweeping cuts to the federal workforce at the behest of Trump has led to "Tesla Takedown" protests in the U.S. against the automaker, while Tesla's sales in Europe have slumped. On Sunday, dozens of demonstrators gathered at the Tesla showroom in Lisbon to protest against Musk, with some holding signs reading "Boycott Tesla".
(With Reuters inputs)
