- In a middle-of-the-night Truth Social post, President Donald Trump claimed he would “buy a brand-new Tesla” Tuesday morning to support its CEO Elon Musk. The EV company saw a 15% slump in shares Monday, totalling a 40% loss since the start of this year, as it reels from the impact of proposed tariffs and Musk’s close affiliation with the Trump administration.
President Donald Trump will apparently keep his promise to buy a new Tesla, a move he claimed would be in solidarity with CEO Elon Musk amid Tesla’s torrid year.
Shortly after midnight ET on Tuesday, Trump praised Musk’s efforts in helping the U.S. and said he would buy a new Tesla in solidarity with the carmaker’s boss, who has become Trump’s de facto cost-cutting czar.
“The Radical Left Lunatics, as they often do, are trying to illegally and collusively boycott Tesla, one of the World’s great automakers, and Elon’s ‘baby’, in order to attack and do harm to Elon, and everything he stands for,” Trump said in a Truth Social post.
“I’m going to buy a brand new Tesla tomorrow morning as a show of confidence and support for Elon Musk,” he continued.
White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said in a press briefing Tuesday that a Tesla was on its way to the White House for the president to view, at which point he would decide if he wanted to purchase the EV. Leavitt said he’d pay “full market price” for the car.
The White House and Tesla did not respond to Fortune‘s requests for comment.
Trump’s vow to support Tesla follows the EV company’s worst single day selloff in its history, its share price plummeting 15%, bringing its total losses in 2025 to more than 40% and erasing $127 billion from the EV maker’s market value. Tesla is trading up about 3% as of midday Tuesday.
Trump ties may be hurting Tesla
As Musk has rocketed to power in Trump’s inner circle—attending Cabinet meetings and orchestrating mass firings—his status within the U.S. government has perhaps come at the expense of Tesla.
Analysts have agreed Musk’s involvement in politics was a surefire way to alienate his customer base and investors, but others argue his duties in Trump’s administration—as well as his involvement in SpaceX, Neuralink, xAI, and X—has siphoned attention from his EV company.
Wedbush Securities analyst Dan Ives wrote in an investor note that this is “a moment of truth for Musk and Tesla.”
“If Musk continues to head down the DOGE path 110%…showing no attention to Tesla during this turbulent time then brand damage will become more pervasive as right now our work in the field shows less than 5% (very contained) of Tesla owners would second guess buying a Tesla again due to Musk,” the note states. “We have been here before with Musk many times over the last decade…and he ultimately stepped up for Tesla shareholders.”
Musk admitted Monday in an interview with Fox News that he is running the company “with great difficulty.”
Boycotts and buyer’s remorse
Slumping sales have also contributed to Tesla shareholders losing confidence in the brand. Tesla sales in Germany, Europe’s biggest auto market, tanked 60% year over year in January, while shipments to China fell 49% in February.
In the U.S., Tesla is not faring much better. Sales in California, the country’s biggest car market, dropped 8% in the fourth quarter of 2024.
In tandem with slowing sales and the rise of competitors in other markets, like China’s BYD, car shoppers are choosing to snub Tesla, either out of embarrassment or to make a political statement. A surge of protests have broken out across the country and overseas in Germany and Portugal, with participants holding signs calling for boycotts of Musk’s carmaker.
Trump’s claims the boycotts are “illegal” are erroneous, as the Supreme Court has repeatedly upheld arguments supporting the protests, with the exception of ones that are strictly for financial gain instead of political expression. Musk has previously argued the protests are the political machinations of Democrat megadonors George Soros and Reid Hoffman. Hoffman denied the claim on social media.
Meanwhile, some Tesla owners with buyer’s remorse are trying to offload their EVs on the resale market.
“I’m sort of embarrassed to be seen in that car now,” one owner told the New York Times before trading in a Tesla.