Will Musk’s explosive order help with Trump or harm his business?

When Elon Musk recently announced that he was withdrawing from politics, investors hoped that it would mean that he would strengthen his participation in the many technology companies he manages.

His explosive order with President Donald Trump – and the very public broadcast of his dirty White House laundry – suggests that the changing Musk priorities may not be quite the salla they hoped for.

Instead of withdrawing somewhat from the eyes of society and focusing on strengthening Tesla’s wealth and other businesses, he is now threatened by a boycott by one of his main clients – Trump’s federal government.

Tesla’s shares were sent to a free fall on Thursday – they fell by 14% – as it sounded for President Donald Trump on social media.

They jumped a little on Friday after some indications, the temperamental ones, cooled.

However, for investors and analysts who have made it clear for months that they have been wanting Musk from his phone and back to work, the situation is far from perfect.

However, some claim that the problems of Musk’s business are much deeper than this spit – and the controversial role in the Trump administration, which it has put on a spectacular end.

For the veteran technical journalist, Kara Swisher is especially for Tesla.

“Tesla finished,” she told the BBC on the sidelines of the San Francisco Media Summit earlier this week.

“It was a great car company. They could compete in the autonomous taxi space, but they are very back.”

Tesla has long been trying to play catching against Waymo rival, owned by Google-Parent Alphabet, whose taxis without drivers have been passing from the streets of San Francisco for years-now operating in several more cities.

This month, Musk should monitor the start of Tesla at a batch of autonomous robes in Austin, Texas.

He published on X last week that the electric vehicle manufacturer tested the Y model without drivers on board.

“I believe that 90% of Tesla’s future value will be autonomous and robotics,” Wedbush Securities analyst Dan Ives told the BBC this week, adding that the start of Austin will be a “moment of catchment”.

“The first task is to ensure that the autonomous vision will come to a phenomenal start,” Ives added.

But with the divided attention of Musk, the chances of success of the project seem to extend.

And there is something else to report: Musk’s own motivation.

A conversation in the Silicon Valley has lately focused less on whether Musk can turn things around and more whether it is even interested.

“He is a really powerful person when he is focused on something,” says Ross Gerber, president and CEO of Gerber Kawasaki Wealth and Investment Management.

“Before that, it was about proving the world that it would make EVS – the technology that no one else could do. It was a matter of proving that he could do rockets. He had a lot to prove.”

A long -time Tesla investor, Gerber has struck the shares and paired his participation after the Musk recruitment in right policy. He called Thursday a “extremely painful day”.

“This is the dumb thing that you could possibly think that you have more power than the President of the United States,” Gerber said, citing Musk’s social media rally against Trump.

The BBC turned to X, Tesla and SpaceX, looking for a comment from G -N Musk, but did not get an answer.

A special problem for Musk is that, before at first glance, he created an enemy in Donald Trump, he already had one in the social media campaign of the major social media against his car manufacturer.

The protests, called #Teslatakedown, have been played all over the country every weekend since Trump took office.

In April Tesla reported a 20% drop in car sales for the first three months of the year. The profits were immersed over 70%and the price of the shares dropped with it.

“He should not decide the fate of our democracy by disassembling our government by piece. It is not right,” I told me the protesting Linda Coistinen on a demonstration outside the Berklie dealer, California, in February.

Koistinen said he wanted to personally make a “visible stand” against Musk.

“In the end, it’s not about the Tesla technology or corporation,” says Joan Donovan, a prominent researcher of misinformation who has organized the #Teslatakedown protests on social media.

“This is the way Tesla’s stock managed to be armed against humans, and he put Musk in such a position so that there is an incredible amount of power without transparency,” Donovan added.

Another aspect of the Musk empire, which increased the fury of its offenders, is the X, the social media platform ever known as Twitter.

“He bought Twitter so that he intends and will be able to – when a hat falls – to reach hundreds of millions of people,” Donovan said.

However, there is another opportunity here.

Can Musk’s high profile fall with Trump help him rehabilitate him in the eyes of people who turned against him because of his previous closeness to the president?

Patrick Murhead, Chief Analyst at Moor Insights & Strategy, thinks he can.

“We are a very forgiving country,” Murhead says in a telephone interview.

“These things take time,” he admits, but “it’s not unprecedented.”

Swisher likened Musk’s personal brand to Microsoft’s co -founder Bill Gates more than two decades ago.

She said once Gates was considered a “Darth Vader of the Silicon Valley” because of his “arrogant and rough” personality.

Today, despite his shortcomings, Gates has largely rehabilitated his image.

“He learned. He grew up. People can change,” Sweed told me, though Musk is “clearly alarmed.”

The problem with Musk is the future for him and his companies is not only about what he does – but also what Trump is solving.

And while Trump needed Musk in the past, not least to help financing his presidential race, it’s not so clear that he is doing it now.

Noah Smith, a NOAHPINION CONTAGER, said Trump’s highly lucrative raid in cryptocurrencies – As unpleasant as it was as it was “He may have released him from Musk to do his will.”

“I guess it was so that it could come out from under the Elon,” Smith said.

In Trump’s most frightened commentary for the day, he suggested that he reduce Musk’s government contracts, which have an approximate value of $ 38 billion.

A significant part of this goes to the Musk Company SpaceX rocket – at first glance it threatens his future.

Despite the bumping, Trump’s warning can be a little more kuhu than it seems.

This is because Spacex’s spacecraft and load spaces to the International Space Station, where three NASA astronauts are currently published.

He demonstrates that Spacex has so much strengthened in the space and national security apparatus in the United States that Trump’s threat can be difficult to implement.

You can make a similar argument for Musk’s internet satellite company, Starlink. Finding an alternative can be easier to say than to do.

But if there are restrictions on what Trump can do, the same is true of Musk.

In the middle of his turn with Trump, he threatened to bring the dragon out – but it had not been a long time to row back.

In response to the suggestion of the X user that he “cooled” he wrote, “Good advice. Okay, we won’t give way to the dragon.”

It is clear that Musk and Trump’s friendship is over. It is less for their reading to each other.

Whatever the future of Musk’s business, it seems that Trump – and the actions of his administration – will continue to have a big word in them.