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Musk stepping back from government work amid plummeting Tesla sales

Elon Musk said in an earnings call Tuesday that he will turn more of his attention to Tesla starting next month.

Elon Musk steps off Air Force One upon arrival at Morristown Municipal Airport in Morristown, New Jersey, on March 22, 2025. | Brendan Smialowski/AFP via Getty Images

Elon Musk steps off Air Force One upon arrival at Morristown Municipal Airport in Morristown, New Jersey, on March 22, 2025. | Brendan Smialowski/AFP via Getty Images

Elon Musk said on an earnings call Tuesday that he plans to devote more of his attention to running his electric vehicle company Tesla, which reported a stark drop in sales and revenues for the first quarter of the year, amid pervasive concerns about the impacts of tariffs and Musk’s own role in reshaping the government.

Tesla’s total revenue from car sales dipped 20 percent and net income fell an astonishing 71 percent during the first quarter of 2025, the company announced Tuesday.

On an earnings call with investors, Musk said “starting next month I will be allocating more of my time to Tesla” and that he will “continue to spend a day or two on government matters” as long as President Donald Trump wants.

 

Musk didn’t directly address any implications about whether his involvement with spearheading steep cuts to the federal workforce and deploying his DOGE data teams throughout the government impacted his company’s sales or his decision to step back from his role with DOGE — though he said, “There’s been some blowback for the time that I’ve been spending in government” with DOGE.

Tesla’s total revenue dropped to $19.3 billion, a 9 percent dip over the first quarter of 2024 — a precipitous drop Tesla said was partially due to a decline in vehicle deliveries and a reduction in how much its cars are selling for, according to data released ahead of an earnings call later Tuesday.

The company’s operating income fell 66 percent to .4 billion.

Notably, Musk has been a vocal opponent of many of the tariffs Trump has decided to enact, though on the earnings call he said Tesla is “the least affected car company with respect to tariffs, at least in most respects,” owing to its supply chains.

“I’ve been on the record many times saying that I believe lower tariffs are generally a good idea for prosperity, but this decision is fundamentally up to the elected representative of the people being the president of the United States. So you know, I’ll continue to advocate for lower tariffs rather than higher tariffs, but that’s all I can do.”

And he offered a defense of that work, saying DOGE has “made a lot of progress in addressing waste and fraud,” which he said had to be fought to “try to get the country back on the right track.”

“And working together with President Trump and his administration — because a further shift, if America goes down, we all go down with it, including Tesla and everyone else.”

Author: Chris Marquette

Source: Politico

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