Tesla’s stock price suffered its biggest one-day drop in its history as the feud between Elon Musk and Donald Trump escalated on social media.
On Thursday evening, the ‘first buddy’ relationship between the world’s richest man and the world’s most powerful man finally imploded in very public fashion.
In a series of posts on X and Truth Social, Musk and Trump went back and forth in an argument that was kicked off when the Tesla CEO slammed the president’s new tax and spending bill.
Speaking in the Oval Office, Trump then said he was “very disappointed” in Musk, with the spat carrying on on social media throughout the night.
This included a post from Trump in which he suggested he could terminate US government contracts with Musk’s companies.
And then Tesla’s stock price fell off a cliff, as the company suffered a sharp sell-off of shares.
The Financial Times reports that the electric vehicle group’s shares closed down more than 14 per cent, wiping $153bn from its market capitalisation.
This means Tesla’s share price is down 25% since the start of the year.
In a Truth Social post on Thursday, Trump said: “The easiest way to save money in our Budget, Billions and Billions of Dollars, is to terminate Elon’s Governmental Subsidies and Contracts.”
There are also reports that Trump’s administration is considering revoking EV subsidies entirely.
Reacting to Musk’s criticism of Trump’s “big beautiful bill”, the president said: “I’m very disappointed, because Elon knew the inner workings of this bill better than almost anybody sitting here, better than you people”
“All of a sudden, he had a problem, and he only developed the problem when he found out that we’re going to have to cut the EV mandate.”
In the ensuing social media spat, Musk asked his followers if there should be a new political party for the “80% in the middle,” claimed Trump would never have won the election without his support and alleged that the Republican was in the Epstein files.
Meanwhile, Trump said Musk was “wearing thin” before threatening to cancel Musk’s government contracts, such as deals SpaceX has with NASA.
The Wall Street Journal reports that Trump’s companies have also suffered over night. Shares in Trump Media & Technology Group were down eight percent and Trump Coin, the president’s meme cryptocurrency, was down 12 percent in afternoon trading.