Elon Musk’s closeness to Donald Trump has driven Tesla’s furious share price rally since November, but his political antics have damaged the electric car maker’s brand.
Tesla’s brand value plummeted 26 per cent in 2024, to $43 billion, according to a Brand Finance report.
Regarding Musk, Brand Finance’s David Haigh says there “are people who think he’s wonderful, but many that don’t” – an understatement, if ever there was one.
Tesla’s brand won’t have been helped by the latest controversy, over whether Musk intended to give a Nazi-style salute in a speech celebrating Trump’s inauguration. Billionaire money manager Cliff Asness was dismissive, asking on X/Twitter if the “insane TDS [Trump derangement syndrome] people” could explain why Musk would “almost kind of intentionally but not quite do a Nazi Sieg Heil”.
Musk has long dabbled in all kinds of conspiracy theories. Lately, he has championed imprisoned far-right activist Tommy Robinson as well as calling on Germans to vote for the far-right AfD party in next month’s elections.
Musk likes attention, trolling and triggering his opponents. Even if his hand gesture was an awkward mistake, it was a careless one. As for Tesla, which reports earnings on Wednesday, investors must wish their self-described “technoking” would quieten down. As Dan McCrum cautioned on the Financial Times’s Alphaville blog, it’s “an awfully long way down” for the $1.3 trillion stock if investors “start to worry that Musk could become more associated with white power than clean power”.
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