How badly could Donald Trump hurt Elon Musk?

Io Dodds, The Independent

Even for Elon Musk, this is — to use the precise technical term — bonkers. Barely one week after leaving the Trump administration with every semblance of amity, the world's richest person is going scorched earth against the leader of the world's richest nation. Insults and threats. Calls for impeachment. Sinister references to Jeffrey Epstein. Somehow, Kanye West is also involved. It's like the messiest online influencer drama you've ever seen, except the parties are two of the most powerful people on Earth. But when it comes down to brass tacks, what exactly does Musk stand to lose in this titanic celebrity divorce? If Trump were to follow through on all his threats, and use every available weapon against Musk's business empire, how badly could it hurt him?

The short answer is: pretty badly. In fact, with some admittedly quick and dirty math, we can put a price tag on some of it. SpaceX and the $68bn black hole. Elon Musk's estimated $388bn fortune — already $26.6bn smaller than it was before this frank exchange of thermonuclear warheads — depends on the success of two companies which are both intertwined with the US political system. One is Tesla, which makes electric vehicles; the other is SpaceX, which builds rockets, spacecraft, and satellites. X, formerly Twitter, can be left aside for now; having bought the social network 2022 for $44bn, Musk is still struggling to recoup his investment and has almost certainly lost money overall.

Let's start with Space Exploration Technologies Corp., aka SpaceX. Not many people can afford to rent a rocket, so a lot of its business comes from government contracts, and U.S. government contracts most of all. As of writing, according to federal data, the Texas-based company has been paid or promised just under $21bn by Uncle Sam since 2008. The total potential value of all SpaceX's existing contracts, however, is much higher: $89.2bn. If Trump cancelled every contract tomorrow, that would mean a theoretical maximum of $68bn in lost potential income. For context, that's more than four times SpaceX's entire forecasted revenue for 2025, and nearly 15 times its revenue from 2022. Of course, there's no way to know if those maximum payments would ever actually have been made. So we could also get a rough sense of what SpaceX stands to lose by looking at the actual cash it received from federal coffers every year. In 2022 that was $2.8bn; in 2023, $3.1bn; and in 2024, $3.8bn.

On the plus side for Musk, the US government is so dependent on SpaceX that some critics have called it a monopoly in the making. SpaceX ferries our astronauts to and from the International Space Station, is heavily involved in Nasa's moon landing program, and manages an increasing share of government satellite communications as well. Still, that does not guarantee safety. Would you really, in all soberness, bet against Donald Trump doing something that hurts the country merely to punish his personal enemies? In fact, as Talking Points Memo editor-in-chief Josh Marshall argues, SpaceX's critical role might actually put it in greater danger, because it leaves the feds with few options except "expropriation or nationalisation".

Tesla in regulators' crosshairs?Like SpaceX, Tesla has benefited greatly from taxpayer money, mostly in the form of emission trading payments from non-electric carmakers and tax credits or consumers buying electric vehicles. An analysis by The Washington Post put Tesla's total income from emission credits since 2007 at $11.4bn as of this February. Its gain from tax credits, which allow more people to buy its cars at higher prices, has been estimated at $3.4bn. Those emission credit schemes are run by US states, not by the federal government. Nevertheless, Trump and the Republican Party have tried to undermine such schemes by contesting states' ability to set their own emissions rules. The wider impact is difficult to calculate. In contrast to SpaceX, Tesla sells to ordinary people, who tend to have their own opinions independent of government. In reputational terms, splitting noisily with Trump could reverse some of its recent sales losses; on the other hand, it might just make Tesla hated on both sides of politics.

The biggest risk may be regulatory. At the time of Trump's second inauguration, Tesla was being investigated by numerous federal agencies including the Justice Department, the National Labor Relations Board, and the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration — which by itself had six pending probes. During his time at DOGE, Democrats feared Musk could use his power to influence or cancel these cases. But Trump's unabashed willingness to wield state power to punish those who displease him while rewarding loyalists cuts both ways. Live by the chainsaw, die by the chainsaw. How much that costs Tesla would depend on how far Trump is willing to go, and on the outcome of any ensuing court battle. But when U.S. stock exchanges closed on Thursday its share price had crashed by nearly 12 percent, wiping $122bn off its market value.

Potential deportation — or worseSo far we've only addressed Elon Musk's finances. Yet there are other, more personal ways that Trump could hurt him if the former reality TV star truly isn't here to make friends. For example, Trump's old advisor Stephen Bannon — who has previously branded Musk a "parasitic illegal immigrant" — urged the administration to investigate Musk's immigration history, and potentially deport him. Unlike some of the feverish allegations that emanate from the extended Trump-o-sphere, this one actually has some substance. An investigation by The Washington Post last year alleged that Musk had worked illegally in the US while launching his Silicon Valley career in the mid-90s. Musk has denied this, and in any case he has been a US citizen since 2002. Still, legal experts have said his citizenship could technically be revoked if he were proven to have lied to immigration authorities. And while those laws have only rarely been enforced in the past 25 years, some Trump aides and allies have said they want that to change.

Nor is that anywhere close to the only alleged skeleton in Musk's closet. What is his relationship with ecstasy, Adderall, ketamine, or magic mushrooms? Has he ever been in regular contact with Vladimir Putin? Did his colleagues at DOGE rigorously follow information security laws when extracting sensitive data from federal systems? What happened to all that data after it was obtained? At least we can probably can rule out plain old assassination by government special forces. Although, to be fair, that is literally something that Trump and his lawyers have argued should be protected by presidential immunity.