Elon Musk ratchets up attacks on Navarro as Tesla shares slump for fourth day
Elon Musk (L), and Peter Navarro (R).
Reuters
As Tesla shares plummeted for a fourth straight day, CEO Elon Musk let loose on President Donald Trump’s top trade advisor Peter Navarro.
Musk, the world’s richest person, started going after Navarro over the weekend, posting on X that a “PhD in econ from Harvard is a bad thing, not a good thing,” a reference to Navarro’s degree. Whatever subtlety remained at the beginning of the week has since vanished.
On Tuesday, Musk wrote that “Navarro is truly a moron,” noting that his comments about Tesla being a “car assembler,” as much are “demonstrably false.” Musk called Navarro “dumber than a sack of bricks,” before later apologizing to bricks. Musk also called Navarro “dangerously dumb.”
Musk’s attacks on Navarro represent the most public spat between members of President Trump’s inner circle since the term began in January, and show that the steep tariffs announced last week on more than 180 countries and territories don’t have universal approval in the administration.
When asked about the feud in a briefing on Tuesday, White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said, “Look, these are obviously two individuals who have very different views on trade and on tariffs.”
“Boys will be boys, and we will let their public sparring continue,” she said.
For Musk, whose younger brother Kimbal — a restaurant owner, entrepreneur and Tesla board member — has joined in on the action, the name-calling appears to be tied to business conditions.
Tesla’s stock is down 22% in the past four trading sessions and 45% for the year. Tesla has lost more tha $585 billion in value since the calendar turned, equaling tens of billions of dollars in paper losses for Musk, who is also CEO of SpaceX and the owner of xAI and social network X.
Even before President Trump detailed his plan for widespread tariffs, he’d already placed a 25% tariff on vehicles not assembled in the U.S. Many analysts said Tesla could withstand those tariffs better than competitors because its vehicles sold in the U.S. are assembled domestically.
But the company’s production costs are poised to increase because of the tariffs on materials and parts from foreign suppliers. Canada and Mexico are among the leading sources of U.S. steel imports, and Canada is the nation’s largest supplier of aluminum, while China and Mexico are home to major suppliers of printed circuit boards to the automotive industry.
At a recent an event hosted by right-wing Italian Deputy Prime Minister Matteo Salvini, Musk said, “Both Europe and the United States should move, ideally, in my view, to a zero-tariff situation, effectively creating a free trade zone between Europe and North America.”
Musk, whose view on trade relations with Europe stands in stark contrast to the policies implemented by the president, has a vested interest in the region. Tesla has a large car factory outside of Berlin, and the European Commission previously turned to SpaceX for launches.
Even before the tariffs, Tesla’s business was faltering. Last week, the company reported a 13% year-over-year decline in first-quarter deliveries, missing analysts’ estimates. That report that landed days after Tesla’s stock price wrapped up its worst quarter since 2022.
Musk, who spent roughly $290 billion to help return Trump to the White House, is now leading the Department of Government Efficiency, or DOGE, which has slashed costs, eliminated regulations and cut tens of thousands of federal jobs. In the first quarter, Tesla was hit with waves of protests, boycotts and some criminal activity that targeted vehicles and facilities in response to Musk’s political rhetoric and his work in the White House.
Lisa Su, CEO of AMD, attends the Artificial Intelligence Action Summit at the Grand Palais in Paris, Feb. 10, 2025.
Benoit Tessier | Reuters
Shares of Advanced Micro Devices slid more than 5% on Wednesday after the company said it could incur charges of up to $800 million for exporting its MI308 products to China and other countries.
“The Company expects to apply for licenses but there is no assurance that licenses will be granted,” AMD said in the filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission.
The new U.S. license requirement, which applies to exports of certain semiconductor products, would hit inventory, purchase commitments and related reserves, AMD said in the filing.
AMD is one of the companies that builds the hardware behind the artificial intelligence boom. The company claims its AMD Instinct MI300 Series accelerators are “uniquely well-suited to power even the most demanding AI and HPC workloads,” according to its website.
It generated a “record” revenue of $25.8 billion in 2025, according to its February earnings release, but the new export restrictions could slow growth.
AMD one month stock chart.
Nvidia, an AMD competitor, released a similar disclosure on Tuesday. The company said it will take a quarterly charge of about $5.5 billion for exporting H20 graphics processing units.
China is Nvidia’s fourth-largest region by sales, after the U.S., Singapore, and Taiwan, according to the company’s annual report. More than half of its sales went to U.S. companies in its fiscal year that ended in January.
–CNBC’s Kif Leswing and Jordan Novet contributed to this report.
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