Tesla’s Second Year Delivery Down: The Impact of Donald Trump’s Tsar on Wall Street, Consumer Lobby, and Corporate Responsibility

The company announced Wednesday that the global deliveries of its flagship electric car models fell in the first quarter. The decline is due to the increase in competition as well as the fact that President Donald Trump’s cost-cutting tsar has sparked a backlash among consumers.

The results, released before the opening bell on Wall Street, sent Tesla’s already battered shares — which have lost 35% of their value since the start of the year — down even further in early trading. Before noon, however, the share price had rallied.

“I might call it a disaster,” says Daniel Ives, managing director at Wedbush Securities. Wall Street was “anticipating softness, but this was, I think, one of the worst delivery quarters relative to the original expectations in the last few years,” he says.

It’s a sentiment shared by other analysts. Gene Munster, a managing partner at Deepwater Asset Management, posted on X in February that “the catalyst” for lowered expectations for Tesla “has been Musk’s increased political visibility, alienating buyers.”

Musk, who backed Trump in the 2024 election and donated more than a quarter of a billion dollars to his campaign, has become a key figure in the new administration’s push to reduce government spending. Musk is the head of the Department of Government Efficiency, or DOGE, and he is the public face of often unpopular cuts. His moves have sparked widespread anger, triggering massive protests at Tesla stores and acts of vandalism targeting the company’s vehicles, chargers and storefronts.

Musk was unsuccessful in his attempt to sway the Wisconsin Supreme Court in favor of the Republicans. Speaking at a rally in the state ahead of Tuesday’s poll, Musk acknowledged that working for the White House was “a very expensive job” and that “my Tesla stock and the stock of everyone who holds Tesla has gone roughly in half.” Susan Crawford was theLiberal judge won the race, and it will keep the court leaning in Democrats’ direction.

He is likely to stay at the helm of the company for at least another 5 to 10 years. “[But] he’s going to have to take a step back from DOGE and start to actually become more involved [at Tesla].”

is transportation editor with 10+ years of experience who covers EVs, public transportation, and aviation. His work has appeared in newspapers.

Tesla Takedown, Tesla Sharedown, and Other Abrupt Events in the First Three Months of the Tesla Precession: State of the Art, Autonomy and Future Prospects

While Tesla faces new hurdles, other automakers are reporting brisk sales of their own EVs. In the first three months of the year, General GM sold nearly 31,0000 vehicles, doubling its figure from a year ago.

Musk’s antics have spawned a nationwide protest movement called Tesla Takedown, aimed at boycotting the company and driving down its stock price. And it appears to be successful in persuading many progressive Tesla owners to sell their vehicles, despite steep drops in used car values.

There have also been an unrelated spate of violent attacks on Tesla stores and vehicles around the world, including arson and vandalism. A fire at a showroom in Rome resulted in 17 cars being destroyed. President Donald Trump has said suspects caught defacing Tesla vehicles would be charged with “domestic terrorism.”

Musk thinks that artificial intelligence, robotic and self-driving cars will lead to new financial heights for the company. He claims the company will launch an “unsupervised” robotaxi pilot in Austin, Texas, in June. He has made previous promises about the future of driving. And experts have questioned Tesla’s approach to the technology, pointing to dozens of fatal crashes that have occurred involving the company’s partially automated features.