Elon Musk Reacts After Tesla Suffers $16 Billion Stock Market Hit
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Tesla CEO Elon Musk responded Monday after his car company suffered huge losses amid a deepening Wall Street sell-off spurred by concerns over President Donald Trump’s tariff and trade policies.
The Context
The S&P slid 2.7 percent on Monday amid mounting worries about how much strain Trump’s economic policies will impose on Americans. The Dow Jones Industrial Average dropped 2.1 percent, while the Nasdaq took the heaviest hit, plunging 4 percent on its worst day since 2022.
What To Know
Tesla’s stock fell by 15 percent on Monday, losing $16 billion in one day and becoming the worst-performing stock in the S&P 500 this year.
Musk shrugged off the loss as well as a slew of other negative news reports, in a Fox Business Network interview.
“But look on the bright side!” Musk said, quoting Monty Python, as he often has before. “Always look on the bright side of life!”
Elon Musk departs a meeting with Senate Republicans at the U.S. Capitol in Washington, D.C., on March 5. Elon Musk departs a meeting with Senate Republicans at the U.S. Capitol in Washington, D.C., on March 5. Ben Curtis/AP
Monday’s turmoil came after Trump acknowledged that the U.S. is going through “a period of transition because what we’re doing is very big.”
“We’re bringing wealth back to America,” the president told Fox News’ Maria Bartiromo in a Sunday interview. “That’s a big thing. And there are always periods of, it takes a little time. I think it should be great for us.”
Trump also conceded that the U.S. will experience some volatility as a result of his policies, telling Bartiromo the country is “going to have a disruption, but we’re OK with that.”
Musk, who sat down with Fox’s Larry Kudlow for an interview Monday, also addressed the Department of Government Efficiency’s (DOGE) efforts to root out what the Trump administration has characterized as government “waste, fraud and abuse.”
The SpaceX CEO said the task force has “pretty much” gained access to every government agency and its spending data, adding that DOGE is “transparent line-by-line” about funding it plans to slash.
Musk’s DOGE has what it calls a “wall of receipts” on its official website, where it documents grants and programs it has cut or intends to cut. But The New York Times has documented multiple instances in which DOGE vastly inflated the amount of money it reportedly saved.
“The president is the elected representative of the people,” Musk said. “And if the president cannot get things implemented as a reflection of the will of the people, then what we have is not a democracy, we have a bureaucracy … rule of the bureau, not rule of the people. What we’re trying to defeat here is the bureaucracy and have rule of the people.”
Musk, who has spearheaded DOGE’s cuts to federal programs and its efforts to dismantle government agencies, has not been elected to any government position. He spent more than $200 million to help get Trump elected.
Tesla’s Monday misfortunes come as Musk faces a slew of other hurdles, both as the head of SpaceX and Tesla as well as the head of DOGE.
Last week, SpaceX’s Starship rocket suffered its second setback of the year when it exploded shortly after launching.
The next day, Trump appeared to rein in Musk’s wrecking-ball approach to shrinking the bureaucracy, saying he would use a “‘scalpel’ rather than the ‘hatchet'” to make cuts.
What People Are Saying
White House National Economic Council Director Kevin Hassett told CNBC earlier Monday: “There are a lot of reasons to be extremely bullish about the economy going forward. But for sure, this quarter, there are some blips in the data. What’s going to happen is the first quarter is going to squeak into the positive category, and then the second quarter is going to take off as everybody sees the reality of the tax cuts.”
What Happens Next
Economic turbulence over tariffs is likely just beginning. Trump imposed steep tariffs on Mexico and Canada and increased tariffs on China last week, only to walk them back after they sent markets into a tailspin and sparked reciprocal tariffs from Canada and China.
Trump subsequently said that most goods covered by the USMCA trade agreement—which Trump negotiated during his first term as a replacement for NAFTA—will be granted temporary reprieve from tariffs through April 2. He also included a carve-out for automakers.
Barring another intervention, those tariffs will kick back in next month, as well as additional tariffs on agricultural products that Trump announced earlier.
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