“He is a truly evil person. His sole objective is to become a trillionaire. He will do anything related to make sure that his companies are protected,” said Steve Bannon, the Gramscian chief ideologue of the MAGA cause, in an interview with Italy’s Corriere della Sera this month.
“Quite frankly, the people around Trump are tired of it. We’ve seen peak Elon, his intrusive nature, his lack of understanding of the true issues,” said Bannon.
Steve Bannon, former adviser to Donald Trump,is a big critic of Musk. Credit: Bloomberg
“Before, because of all the money he put in, I was prepared to tolerate it: not any longer. His half-baked ideas are really about the implementation of techno-feudalism on a global scale,” he said.
The final rupture was over Musk’s backing for H-1B skilled visas, mostly for Indians working for “big tech”. But it would have happened sooner or later because the MAGA theology of primordial traditionalism is at odds with everything about the Silicon Valley plutocracy.
Bannon later told The New York Times that the clash went to the core of competing belief systems. “I would almost argue it’s an unbridgeable gap,” he said.
The tech Right salivates over network states run on blockchain, seeking to re-invent human life and society upon new technological foundations. This threatens the essence of the traditional nation, bound together by what Abraham Lincoln called the mystic chords of memory.
Musk has manoeuvred himself into an invidious position.
“These people are techno-feudalists and it’s a dangerous thing. It’s going to be the populist-nationalist movement that’ll take them on and break them,” said Bannon. Bluster or not, can one dispute his larger point?
Musk has sought to deflect the MAGA backlash by plunging into European politics and cosying up to Alternative fur Deutschland (AfD) and Britain’s Reform. I doubt that many will be fooled by this crude ploy.
Trump can try to stand above the two warring factions of his coalition but ultimately he may have to sacrifice Musk if he wants to hold on to his mass base, which he will not find hard to do. Washington is too small for two such egos.
Musk may be sitting on a future gold mine with SpaceX and his network of satellites. But what is Tesla worth once Donald Trump tires of him? He has already alienated his core clientele in the West. What eco-liberal wants to be seen driving a Tesla any more? The brand has lost its cachet among that well-heeled tribe of EV early adopters and the market is bursting with other models to choose from.
Stichting Pensioenfonds ABP, Europe’s largest pension fund, has sold all its $US600 million worth of Tesla shares, ostensibly over Musk’s blocked $US56 billion pay package – but undoubtedly for a mix of reasons.
Tesla’s big exposures within China make it vulnerable.Credit: AP
Adam Jonas, Morgan Stanley’s star analyst, is keeping the faith. He has just raised his price target from $US600 to $US800 in his bull scenario, premised on sales of 7 million vehicles a year by 2030. The underlying car business would be a small fraction of this.
The real share value would be in everything else: driverless robotaxis, streaming media, software upgrades, navigation services, robots and so forth. “While autos still matter, we see embodied AI as the driver,” he said.
The $US800 case is that Tesla is so far ahead on data and autonomous driving that it will carry away the prize in the late 2020s. But Musk still has no Level 4 approval for full self-driving capabilities and no robotaxi with software good enough for unsupervised driving. Rival Waymo is already running 100,000 paid rides a week, albeit “geo-constrained” to limited areas.
You can hail a driverless robotaxi today in Wuhan. WeDrive is rolling out services across Chinese cities. It is patchy but the Chinese are catching up fast. BYD is investing $US14 billion in self-driving tech. It already dominates the Chinese market for sales of EVs and hybrids.
Tesla’s sales in China are still rising but not nearly as fast as the overall EV market. They made up 37 per cent of the company’s worldwide deliveries last year, though the price wars have been brutal. The Shanghai plant exports the Model 3 to Europe, which faces an extra (modest) tariff. Musk is about to lose the $US7500 tax credit for EVs in the US as well, and that threatens profit margins on his coming affordable model.
Perhaps he will talk Trump out of his economic war with China, but I strongly doubt it. If he does not, he is so closely associated with the new White House that his Chinese operations will become a prime target for retaliation.
Loading
Besides, Xi Jinping wants China to dominate the world market for EVs, self-driving AI, humanoid robots, fixed energy storage and everything that Tesla makes.
Musk has manoeuvred himself into an invidious position, caught between the Chinese Communist Party and the MAGA movement and reliant on the fickle favour of a volatile American president. Those Icarus wings of beeswax and feathers have flown too close to the sun.
The Telegraph, London
The Business Briefing newsletter delivers major stories, exclusive coverage and expert opinion. Sign up to get it every weekday morning.
