Tesla, 'perfect storm' on the stock market between duties and reputation. Musk attacks on X

Tesla stock on a rollercoaster ride, from -10% at the start to +3 and more about half an hour after trading began on Wall Street. It then sank again and finally recovered to -2.56% at the close. It was a chaotic day, with Elon Musk shaking up the markets by sharing on X a historic video on free trade (1980 Pbs television series entitled 'Free to Choose') by Nobel economist Milton Friedman. In the famous film, Friedman explains how the production of a simple pencil involves thousands of people around the world, united by trade despite linguistic, religious and cultural differences. The Tesla CEO's post was interpreted as a further distancing of himself from Donald Trump's protectionist policies. In recent days, Musk had called for a 'zero tariff situation' between the US and Europe.

And underscoring the friction between Musk and the president's staff was Peter Navarro, the White House trade advisor and one of the biggest proponents of new US tariffs, who dismissed the zero tariffs proposal between the US and the EU. Navarro called the Tesla CEO 'a car assembler', also in response to a post on X in which Musk wrote that Navarro's 'PhD in Economics from Harvard is a minus, not a plus'. The tycoon did not go subtle in his retort, as Politico headlined: "he didn't build a c...".

"When it comes to tariffs and trade, Elon is not a car manufacturer but a car assembler," Navarro later told Cnbc, adding that many of Tesla's components come from Japan, China, Taiwan. 'The difference between our thinking and Elon's is that we want the tyres to be made in Akron, we want the drivetrains to be made in Indianapolis,' Navarro added. Are the roads really separating soon?

Tesla, meanwhile, halved in value from its December highs. The stock touched $214 at the start of the session, at a one-year low. Well below the $235 threshold indicated a few weeks ago by the US Secretary of Commerce,Howard Lutnick, who had declared: 'It won't go lower than this'. On the day Musk had urged employees, during a live streaming, not to sell shares. Igniting the selling fuse again on Sunday was the resounding downward revision of Wedbush, one of the historically most optimistic voices on the stock.

Analyst Dan Ives cut Tesla's target price from $550, one of the highest on Wall Street, to $315, while maintaining an 'outperform' recommendation. According to Ives, the company is at the centre of a 'perfect storm'. There are two converging factors: on the one hand, the reputational crisis triggered by CEO Elon Musk's political activism; on the other, the Trump administration's new trade policies, which threaten to hit supply chains and the brand's global appeal hard.