Elon Musk is running his businesses "with great difficulty" while working with the Trump administration, the Tesla CEO said on Monday in an interview with Fox Business.
His remarks followed Tesla losing $130 billion in stock market value in a broad selloff on Wall Street that left the electric car maker's shares at their lowest since October.
Tesla's shares slumped 15 percent to $222.15, weighing heavily on the Nasdaq which tumbled 4 percent on fears that the Trump administration's tariffs against major U.S. trading partners could throw the country into a recession.
The decline in Tesla's market capitalization on Monday eclipsed the $86 billion combined stock market value of Ford Motor and General Motors.
Monday's losses evaporated the last of a Tesla rally late last year that nearly doubled its stock following the November 5 election of U.S. President Donald Trump. That surge was fuelled by optimism that Tesla would benefit from Musk's close relationship with Trump.
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".
"The public eye seems to be coalescing around what he's doing for the federal government. So if you're a shareholder, you can't help but wonder if that's not detracting from what he should be doing for the publicly traded company that he's running," said Art Hogan, chief market strategist at B. Riley Wealth.
Musk's support for far-right parties in Europe appears to be coming at a price for Tesla sales there. Tesla's car sales in Europe tumbled 45 percent in January from a year earlier, while overall EV sales jumped over 37 percent, according to the European Automobile Manufacturers Association.
It is difficult to determine how much Musk's political activities are factoring into Tesla’s vehicle sales, which last year declined on an annual basis for the first time.
Analysts point to other factors in the global EV market, including increased competition from Chinese brands and legacy automakers such as GM.
Source: Reuters
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