Elon Musk says his involvement in Trump’s administration will 'drop significantly' next month - as Tesla profits plunge
Elon Musk has said his time working for the Trump administration will 'drop significantly' next month amid plunging Tesla profits.
Musk says he will spend less time with the Department of Government Efficiency (Doge) from May and will look to spend more time working with Tesla.
The news comes after first-quarter profits Tesla plunge as the company battles declining sales - due in part to Trump's tariffs.
On Tuesday, Tesla said quarterly profits fell by 71% to $409m.
Its revenue dropped 9% to $19.3 billion from January to March - falling short of Wall Street's expectations.
Tesla's stock has sunk more than 40% in 2025 but increased slightly in after-hours trading.
Tesla's stock value has been hampered by financial market disturbance caused by the worldwide trade war tariffs driven by intense competition from Chinese EV maker BYD.
Growing concerns about Musk's ability to focus on Tesla's needs has also impacted Tesla's stock value.
Read more: Elon Musk freezes Tesla orders to China as Trump's trade war continues
Tesla has faced criticism due to Musk's leadership of Doge, which has been responsible for the divisive move of cutting federal government jobs.
In a question-and-answer forum before an investor call on Tuesday, Musk's position as chief executive of Tesla was among the most popular questions asked by shareholders.
Earlier this month, cracks started to form in Musk's White House alliance as the Tesla founder slammed Trump's top tariff guru.
Musk, who previously hit out at Trump’s decision to slap tariffs on countries across the globe, slammed Peter Navarro, the president’s senior counsellor for trade, describing him as “dumber than a sack of bricks".
It comes after Mr Navarro accused the billionaire of running a “car assembler” rather than a manufacturer.
Musk rejected accusations of being against tariffs because he wants to use “cheap foreign parts”, describing them as “demonstrably false”, and declaring Tesla “has the most American-made cars.”
It comes as the International Monetary Fund (IMF) said it is slashing its global growth forecast by 0.5 percentage points this year, with nearly all countries seeing a downgrade.
The latest World Economic Outlook report was produced under "exceptional circumstances", with the IMF being forced to change its projections after US President Donald Trump unveiled a range of new and higher tariffs earlier this month.
The IMF's top economist, Pierre-Olivier Gourinchas, said: "While many of the scheduled tariff increases are on hold for now, the combination of measures and countermeasures has hiked US and global tariff rates to centennial highs.
"For this reason, we expect that the sharp increase on April 2 in both tariffs and uncertainty will lead to a significant slowdown in global growth in the near term."
Global growth is projected to fall from 3.3% in 2024 to 2.8% in 2025, before edging up to 3% in 2026.
This is lower than the IMF's previous forecasts, published in January, by 0.5 percentage points for 2025 and 0.3 percentage points for 2026.