Tesla earnings to show whether anti-Musk backlash damaged bottom line
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(WASHINGTON) — Worldwide protests against Tesla CEO Elon Musk over his role in the Trump administration have coincided with a sales slump and stock woes at the electric carmaker.
Little will be known about the precise impact on Tesla’s bottom line, however, until the company releases its earnings report on Tuesday afternoon. That announcement holds implications for Musk, the world’s richest person, who derives much of his wealth from his Tesla holdings.
The release of the new financial details arrives as some shareholders have called on Musk to step down from his White House role and return full-time to the helm of Tesla.
Musk, whose temporary status as a government employee expires next month, will likely face questions about his plans during a conference call with analysts after the earnings release.
“We view this as a fork-in-the-road time,” Dan Ives, a managing director of equity research at the investment firm Wedbush and a longtime Tesla booster, said in a memo to investors on Sunday.
Tesla shares have dropped in value by roughly half from an all-time high in December. Most of those losses have come since President Donald Trump took office and Musk began his controversial governmental cost-cutting efforts as the head of the newly created Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE).
Tesla remains a top electric carmaker but the company faces growing competition, especially from Chinese firms such as BYD.
Deliveries of Tesla vehicles over the first three months of 2025 dropped about 13% compared to the same period a year ago, the company said earlier this month.
When Tesla announced the decline in deliveries, the company made no mention of its CEO but did say that a “changeover of Model Y lines across all four of our factories led to the loss of several weeks of production in Q1,” but added that “the ramp of the New Model Y continues to go well.”
Tesla sold fewer cars in 2024 than it did the year prior, marking the company’s first year-over-year sales decline in more than a decade, earnings released in January showed.
As rivals have challenged Tesla’s dominance in the electric vehicle market, the company has promised a future revenue stream from autonomous taxis, also known as robotaxis.
Musk announced in late January that the company would roll out its robotaxi test program in Austin, Texas, in June. But within days, China-based competitor BYD unveiled advances in self-driving technology, which the company said was set to be included in models costing as little as $9,600.
Tesla boasts a more complete domestic supply chain than its rival U.S. carmakers but the company remains vulnerable to auto tariffs of the type President Trump imposed earlier this month, according to Musk.
“To be clear, this will affect the price of parts in Tesla cars that come from other countries. The cost impact is not trivial,” Musk said in a post on X in late March.
Gordon Johnson, CEO and founder of data firm GLJ Research, who is bearish on Tesla, voiced concerns about the company in a memo to investors on Monday, saying that the automaker faces a mix of “operational, financial, and reputational challenges.”
“Is Tesla facing an existential crisis?” Johnson added.
(NEW YORK) — Bitcoin surged to a record high on Thursday, vaulting more than 3% in early trading and hurtling past $110,000 for the first time.
The price of bitcoin stood at $111,385 on Thursday, extending a sharp rise that stretches back to the November election of President Donald Trump, a cryptocurrency supporter and investor.
Ether, the second-largest cryptocurrency, jumped 6%. The $TRUMP memecoin, a crypto coin launched by the president in January, increased nearly 6%.
A surge in the value of some cryptocurrencies in recent days followed a Senate vote to advance the GENIUS Act, an industry-backed bill that aims to regulate some digital currency.
The measure establishes rules targeting stablecoins, a type of cryptocurrency pegged to the value of another asset, often the U.S. dollar.
If enacted, the bill could allow such crypto coins to become a mainstream tool for digital payments and other financial instruments, setting the stage for an influx of investment in digital currency.
Critics say the measure fails to address conflict-of-interest concerns exemplified by Trump, and it risks endangering consumers and the wider economy with a weak set of restrictions.
Trump, who also backs a cryptocurrency firm World Liberty Financial, has denied any wrongdoing involving his crypto ventures.
The record high for bitcoin also coincides with a spike in Treasury yields amid deficit concerns centered on a domestic policy bill passed by the U.S. House on Thursday.
The nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office on Tuesday found the tax policies backed by Trump would add $3.8 trillion to the national debt. The finding comes days after a U.S. credit downgrade at Moody’s in part due to the country’s deficit.
Higher yields increase the cost of U.S. borrowing and add strain to the nation’s finances. In theory, investors may seek out alternatives to the U.S. dollar as debit yields face upward pressure.
Bryan Armour, the director of passive strategies research at financial firm Morningstar, attributed the recent rise in the price of bitcoin to both industry regulation and bond market fears.
“I suspect it’s a mix of regulatory adoption and fear for the dollar given the expectation of high government spending,” Armour said.
The price of bitcoin has surged about 40% since the presidential election. Over that period, the S&P 500 has declined 2%, while the tech-heavy Nasdaq has dropped 3%.
In July, Trump told the audience at a cryptocurrency conference in Nashville, Tennessee, that he wanted to turn the U.S. into the “crypto capital of the planet.”
Trump promised to weaken federal oversight of cryptocurrency and establish the federal government’s first strategic bitcoin reserve.
In March, Trump signed an executive order establishing the reserve of digital currencies, saying the move would position the U.S. “as a leader among nations in government digital asset strategy.”
On Thursday, Trump is set to attend a gala with hundreds of top investors in his memecoin, which an announcement described as an “intimate private dinner.”
The move elicited concern among some critics as a possible means of exchanging access to the president for financial gain.
(WASHINGTON) — If this past weekend in European politics is an indicator of anything, it’s that the “Trump effect” is real, and its reverberations are unpredictable.
Three European Union countries held elections on Sunday — Romania, Poland and Portugal — with the results failing to show any clear trend for the future of European politics. The elections did, however, indicate the American president’s growing influence on the continent.
The disparate responses from voters in all three countries — and the lack of any decisive victory for any one party or candidate in Portugal or Poland — hint that the political polarization that has roiled the U.S. over the past decade is a global trend, not merely an American one.
As to whether President Donald Trump and the “Make America Great Again” movement swirling around him can establish European avatars, the question remains an open one.
“I don’t know if I have a firm answer,” Celia Belin, a senior policy fellow at the European Council on Foreign Relations and head of its Paris office, told ABC News. “At the moment, we are all monitoring what is happening and how this influence can establish itself.”
“It’s very early,” Belin added. “This is an ongoing phenomenon.”
While it’s unclear what the extent of Trump’s impact on European politics will ultimately be, Belin said the impact is “stronger” than it was two years ago.
Trump’s influence — indirect and direct — has given populist movements like Germany’s Alternative for Germany party, Poland’s nationalist Law and Justice (PiS) party and Portugal’s far-right Chega party a clear boost, evident in recent elections in each country.
“If I am to compare with two years ago, for example, it is stronger, it is more united, it gives inspiration to a ton of populist nationalist leaders in Europe,” Belin said. “It’s getting stronger. That’s the direction it’s going in right now.”
The groundswell of grievances that carried Trump to the Oval Office twice is not merely an American phenomenon and manifests differently in individual nations. Concerns over globalization, immigration, inequality, the cost of living, low rates of economic growth, progressivism and national identity are near-universal in the Western democratic world.
Trump seized upon those conditions in the U.S. and right-wing leaders in Europe are seeking to do the same.
Election week in Europe
This week’s election results in Romania, Poland and Portugal, however, suggest the translation of Trumpism into European political languages remains incomplete.
In Romania, voters opted for Bucharest Mayor Nicusor Dan’s pro-Europe, pro-NATO, pro-Ukraine platform. Dan won with around 54% of the vote.
Dan’s opponent — Trump supporter George Simion, who courted the MAGA movement and even visited the U.S. during his campaign — came up short, though he vowed to continue “our fight for freedom and our great values along with other patriots, sovereignists and conservatives all over the world.”
In Poland, the presidential election saw liberal Warsaw Mayor Rafal Trzaskowski secure an unexpectedly tight victory in the first round of voting with around 31% of the vote, beating out right-wing rival Karol Nawrocki — who was personally endorsed by Trump — who had 29.5% of the vote.
The two men will go into the second round of voting on June 1, hoping to draw voters from other minor candidates, among them a significant bloc which voted for far-right firebrand Slawomir Mentzen, who came third with 14.8%.
Piotr Buras, a senior policy fellow at ECFR at the head of its Warsaw office, told ABC News that Trump has loomed large over the election.
Nawrocki framed himself as the Trump-friendly candidate, along with his backers in the Law and Justice party, criticizing Trzaskowski’s Civic Platform party and Prime Minister Donald Tusk for allegedly undermining Polish-American relations.
“We used to have a nationwide consensus on America,” Buras said, with voters generally warm to the idea of close ties with Washington, D.C. “Now, because of this ideological divide in Poland, because of the U.S. and because of Trump’s approach to Europe, Poland is suddenly divided on how to go about America,” he added.
In Portugal, meanwhile, the far-right Chega party gained a record 22.6% share of the vote, blowing open the long-standing two-party domination of the country’s political scene even though it was unable to overhaul the ruling center-right Democratic Alliance.
“I am not going to stop until I become the prime minister of Portugal,” Chega leader Andre Ventura — who was among the foreign politicians invited to Trump’s second inauguration — said.
Making Europe great again?
Such confidence in defeat may be buoyed by the strong foundations populist parties and candidates are putting down in Europe. Across the continent, far-right groups are winning historically large chunks of the electorate and dominating political debates, even without securing the reins of power.
In the U.K., the right-wing Reform party recorded a stunning performance in the May local elections, winning hundreds of council seats and leaving leader Nigel Farage — well-known for his cozy relationship with Trump and the MAGA movement — to declare an end to the traditional dominance of Britain’s two major parties.
In Germany’s February parliamentary election, the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) party converted years of growing popularity to win around 21% of the vote and become the second-largest party in the Bundestag.
U.S. Vice President JD Vance conducted his first foreign trip in his new position to Germany in February, shortly before the election, speaking at the Munich Security Conference on February 14.
In his speech addressing the annual security conference, Vance criticized Europe for hindering free speech, suggesting the conference’s decision to ban AfD members from attending was a form of censorship.
“In Britain, and across Europe, free speech, I fear, is in retreat,” Vance said. “I believe that dismissing people, dismissing their concerns, or, worse yet, shutting down media, shutting down elections, or shutting people out of the political process protects nothing. In fact, it is the most surefire way to destroy democracy.” Many political analysts considered Vance’s remarks to be a tacit endorsement of AfD from the Trump administration.
And in France, President Emmanuel Macron has thus far held off the persistent challenge for the presidency from far-right leader Marine Le Pen and the National Rally, but he was unable to stop the party from becoming the largest in the National Assembly in 2024. Only a shaky minority government has kept the party out of the prime minister’s office.
The insurgent parties are coordinating. Leaders have increasingly been drawn to American conservative events, such as the Conservative Political Action Conference — the first-ever European installment of which was held in Budapest, Hungary, in 2022.
And this year, right-wingers gathered for the Make Europe Great Again conference in Madrid in February, organized by Spain’s far-right VOX party.
Buras noted rumors that Vice President JD Vance may even attend a planned CPAC event in Poland in late May, in what could only be interpreted as a show of support for Nawrocki. The event raises the prospect of American “interference almost, or at least influence, from the U.S.,” Buras said.
MAGA blowback
Trump is just as divisive abroad as he is at home. Indeed, polls consistently indicate that many European voters are skeptical of, unsettled by or outright hostile to the American president.
There is, then, no guarantee that a MAGA association will put foreign populists in power. Recent elections in Canada and Australia, for example, saw center-left establishment parties secure victory against conservative opponents they sought to smear as Trumpian.
Trump’s return to the White House “has woken up the anti-populist or anti-nationalist movements,” Belin said. “It gives them a foil. … You want to mobilize your electorate and use the U.S. of Donald Trump as a sort of scarecrow — the mobilization effect goes in two directions.”
“It fuels the extremist base and so it excites a lot of people, but it also fuels the other side and it also frightens the middle,” Belin said.
(WASHINGTON) — President Donald Trump has disrupted global trade and roiled markets in an effort to bring manufacturing jobs back to the U.S. Some of his top tech allies, however, have backed ventures that replace human workers with robots.
Elon Musk, a top donor and adviser to Trump, has touted humanoid robots as a future growth area for electric-carmaker Tesla. “You can produce any product,” Musk said of the robots’ potential capacity during a February interview with Dubai’s World Governments Summit.
Amazon founder Jeff Bezos, who Trump last month called “terrific,” has invested in several advanced robotics firms.
Bezos last year poured funds into Figure, a humanoid robot company that says its initial rollout will focus on manufacturers and warehouses, among other business applications. “We believe humanoids will revolutionize a variety of industries,” the company says on its website.
Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang and OpenAI CEO Sam Altman – both of whom joined Trump on his recent trip to the Middle East – helmed their respective companies as each invested in Figure. OpenAI ended its partnership with Figure last year.
“Trump is talking about bringing back the jobs, and he’s not understanding the tension between that goal and automation, which the tech bros have enthusiasm for,” Harry Holzer, a professor of public policy at Georgetown University and a former chief economist at the U.S. Department of Labor, told ABC News. “There’s a fundamental conflict between those goals.”
Musk did not immediately respond to ABC News’ request for comment made through Musk-owned firm SpaceX. Neither Bezos, Huang nor Altman responded to ABC News’ request.
Speaking at a conference in April, Huang said the onset of artificial intelligence would fuel “new types of factories,” which in turn would create jobs in construction and steelmaking, as well as in trades such as plumbing and electricity.
Even more, Huang said, AI is set to trigger a surge in productivity at companies that adopt the new technology, allowing them to add employees as the firms increase output and revenue.
“New jobs will be created, some jobs will be lost, every job will be changed,” Huang said. “Remember, it’s not AI that’s going to take your job. It’s not AI that’s going to destroy your company. It’s the company and the person who uses AI that’s going to take your job. And so that’s something to internalize.”
Even after a rollback of some levies, consumers face the highest overall average effective tariff rate since 1934, the Yale Budget Lab found earlier this month.
A key reason for the tariffs, White House officials say: Reshoring factories and rejuvenating employment in the manufacturing industry.
Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick said this month in an interview with Fox News that Trump’s vision for ushering in a “golden age” for America involved enticing manufacturers to open factories and build in the United States.
“We’re going to have huge jobs in manufacturing. You’ve heard the president talk about trillions and trillions of factories being built in America,” he said in the interview on May 11.
In response to ABC News’ request for comment, White House Spokesperson Kush Desai said “the importance of President Trump’s push to reinvigorate American industry goes beyond creating good-paying jobs for everyday Americans.”
“Supply chain shocks of critical pharmaceuticals, medical equipment, and semiconductors during the COVID era prove that America cannot rely on foreign imports. The Trump administration remains committed to reshoring manufacturing that’s critical to our national and economic security with a multifaceted approach of tariffs, tax cuts, rapid deregulation, and domestic energy production,” Desai added.
The share of U.S. workers in manufacturing has plummeted for decades. Roughly 8% of U.S. workers currently hold positions in manufacturing, which marks a steep decline from about a quarter of all employees as recently as 1970.
Researchers attribute such decline to overlapping trends, including the offshoring of manufacturing to low-wage markets overseas and the adoption of labor-saving technology throughout the sector.
Long before current advances, automation significantly increased productivity in U.S. factories, meaning the same number of workers could produce many more goods, researchers at Ball State University found in 2015. As a result, they said, manufacturing employment stagnated for decades even as output climbed.
“Automation is something we’ve seen for a long time,” Philipp Kircher, a professor of industrial and labor relations at Cornell University, told ABC News.
Some of Trump’s tech allies have backed firms that seek to further automate manufacturing, touting a new wave of artificial-intelligence equipped robots as a replacement for some workers and salve for labor shortages.
Robotics outfit Vicarious boasts $250 million in investments from a set of backers that includes Bezos, Musk and Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg – all of whom flanked Trump during his inauguration.
On a webpage displaying photos of robots for use in warehouse settings, Vicarious tells potential clients that the products can “reduce both your costs and person-hour needs.”
In 2022, Vicarious was acquired by Alphabet-backed robotics software firm Intrinsic. Alphabet CEO Sundar Pichai also sat alongside tech leaders at Trump’s inauguration.
Alphabet did not respond to ABC News’ request for comment. Meta declined to comment.
Yong Suk Lee, a professor of economics and technology at the University of Notre Dame, described the views on automation among Trump’s tech allies and some of his trade advisers as “opposed.”
The tech position, Lee said, would likely win out, even if some firms do open plants in the U.S.
“If you want to reshore, are you going to pay the same wages as Vietnam? Probably not,” Lee said. “Companies are faced with higher labor costs. In that case, they’ll probably automate.”
Discordant views among some tech leaders and White House officials surfaced in April, when Musk sharply criticized tariff-advocate Peter Navarro, Trump’s senior counselor for trade and manufacturing. Navarro, Musk said, is “truly a moron.”
In an interview with CNBC, Navarro responded, saying Musk “isn’t a car manufacturer — he’s a car assembler.”
To be sure, analysts said, automation in manufacturing would likely continue regardless of support from Trump’s tech allies, since producers are locked in a competition to lower costs and increase output. The precise outlook for manufacturing employment is unclear, they added, since additional technology may add jobs for those maintaining and optimizing the machinery.
“Whether it’s the companies that currently support the U.S. president or not, somebody would be doing this innovation, maybe slightly slower,” Kircher said.
Even at current employment levels, a labor shortage bedevils U.S. manufacturers. Roughly one of every five U.S. factories that failed to produce at full capacity cited a shortage of workers, Jason Miller, a professor of supply chain management at Michigan State University, found in a January study analyzing government data.
Agility Robots, an Amazon-backed firm building humanoid robots, identifies the current push for rejuvenated U.S. manufacturing as an opportunity for greater adoption of technology.
“Manufacturing companies are seeing a massive reshoring movement spanning various industries,” Agility Robots says on its website. “Adding a humanoid robot to your manufacturing facility is a great way to stay on the leading edge of automation.”
In response to ABC News’ request for comment, an Amazon spokesperson pointed to previous remarks about robotics made by a company executive.
“Our goal is to ensure these systems improve safety and productivity. Technology should be used to help us retain and grow our talent through skill development and reimagining how we make our workplace better, both in productivity and safety. If we do this well, we’re certain to always innovate for our customers,” Tye Brady, chief technologist at Amazon Robotics, said in a September blog post.
Amazon has “created more U.S. jobs in the last decade than any other company,” Amazon said this month.
