Elon Musk has himself become a casualty of Donald Trump’s chaotic tariff rollout.
The Tesla CEO’s net worth dipped below $300 billion for the first time since November, when Trump won re-election.
Musk lost $31 billion across Thursday and Friday last week, and another $4.4 billion on Monday, according to Bloomberg, as Tesla shares continued their post-“Liberation Day” tumble. The world’s richest man is now worth $297.8 billion, per the Bloomberg Billionaires Index—bringing his year-to-date losses to a staggering $135 billion.
He’s one of several billionaires whose fortunes have taken a beating since Trump’s announcement of “reciprocal tariffs” on around 90 countries and a blanket 10 percent levy on the entire world last Wednesday sent markets spiraling. Previously announced 25 percent tariffs on imported cars also went into effect last week.
Over the weekend, Musk broke ranks with President Trump and his MAGA loyalists by joining several other billionaires in speaking out against the tariffs.
He reportedly appealed to the president to roll back the sweeping tariffs in private, and urged the U.S. and European nations to move toward a “zero-tariff situation, effectively creating a free-trade zone” in an interview with Italy’s Deputy Prime Minister Matteo Salvini.
By Tuesday, Musk had taken aim at Trump’s trade adviser Peter Navarro—the architect of the tariffs policy—calling him a “moron” and “dumber than a sack of bricks.”
Musk’s alliance with President Trump had initially looked like a boon, with Tesla shares hitting a record high in mid-December.
But his high-profile role as Trump’s senior adviser and mastermind of the controversial Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) has since bruised the Tesla brand. Tesla sales fell 13 percent last quarter to their lowest level since 2022—nearly 50,000 deliveries short of analysts’ expectations.
Musk was the biggest loser from Trump’s tariff fallout on the Bloomberg Billionaires Index on Thursday and Friday, when the super-wealthy lost a collective $536 billion—the biggest two-day loss ever.
Close behind him were Meta’s Mark Zuckerberg, down $27 billion, and Amazon founder Jeff Bezos—also the owner of The Washington Post—who took a $23.5 billion hit.
