Tesla shares jumped 12% on Wednesday morning, pushing the company’s price closer to a new high and boosting Elon Musk’s worth by $15 billion following Donald Trump’s reelection as president and his generous praise of the richest man in the world.
FACTS
- Around 10:10 a.m. EST, Tesla’s stock surged to over $280, surpassing a previous high of $273.54 established on October 27 and setting a new record for the company.
- After Musk spent weeks pushing for Trump across Pennsylvania before to Election Day, Trump hailed Tesla’s CEO as a “super genius” and a “new star” in his victory address early Wednesday.
- A second Trump administration, according to Wedbush Securities analyst Dan Ives, would be “overall negative for the EV industry.” However, the financial services business also saw it as a “huge positive for Tesla,” since the company has the “scale and scope that is unmatched” in the industrial sector.
- According to Ives, Trump’s proposal to impose tariffs on Chinese imports would also prevent NIO and BYD, two Chinese rivals of Tesla that at the time surpassed Tesla as the largest EV manufacturer in the world, from “overwhelming the U.S. market over the coming years.”
According to our most recent calculations, Musk’s stake—which now accounts for around 13% of Tesla’s outstanding shares—increased by $15 billion, making him the richest person in the world with a fortune of $280.3 billion.
read more: Trump’s Election: Potential Implications for the Future of EVs
Musk was one of Trump’s most well-known backers throughout the election campaign. Musk was Trump’s second-largest donor behind Timothy Mellon after the Tesla CEO contributed at least $118 million to his America PAC. Additionally, Musk’s America PAC sent $1 million to voters in battleground states through a distribution that a Philadelphia court momentarily halted. Trump said in September that he would establish a “government efficiency commission,” which Musk had first suggested he would head. Musk backed Trump’s campaign on social media and attended many rallies with him during the election season.
Despite saying at a previous rally not to “bother with the electric” and asserting in a March interview that the cars “cost too much” and will all “be made in China,” Trump has stated that he is a “big fan” of electric automobiles.
