From tariffs to Tesla crash: Why this was a terrible week for Elon Musk

“There are decades where nothing happens; and there are weeks where decades happen.”

No one lived that paradox quite like Elon Musk . For the better part of a year, Musk couldn’t stop winning. He helped install a president, muscled his way into the Cabinet via a meme-laced department called DOGE, bought Twitter just to torch it and rebuild it as X, caught rockets from space, and played geopolitical puppeteer with the kind of arrogance that only comes from owning rockets, satellites, and factories on multiple continents. He caught boosters, launched DOGE, threatened democratically elected leaders, and made bureaucrats in DC tremble like interns at a SpaceX launchpad. For a while, Musk wasn’t just shaping markets—he was reprogramming reality. In fact, Musk has been so succesful that people have even been wondering if he's in fifth or sixth simulation in The Matrix (or high on Ketamine).



And then came this week. Musk’s golden run skidded to a halt. Tesla ’s stock cratered after a dismal earnings report and a botched price-slashing gamble. His favourability plummeted. His $21 million intervention in Wisconsin turned into a double-digit defeat. His chaotic tenure at the Department of Government Efficiency looks set to end in a quiet, undignified exit. And to top it all off, Trump’s tariff barrage wiped $11 billion off Musk’s net worth overnight—because what’s another trade war when you’ve already declared war on public goodwill?

It was a week when everything that once made Musk appear invincible began to look like overreach. A correction, perhaps. A reckoning, more likely. Because if Musk’s rise was the stuff of techno-mythology, this week was the start of the hangover—the moment the man who once bent governments, platforms, and orbit to his will learned that even emperors hit turbulence on re-entry.


Tesla: Crashing Stocks and Radioactive Branding


Tesla’s stock didn’t just dip—it spiralled, shedding billions in market value like a rocket losing panels on descent. The trigger? A brutal slump in first-quarter deliveries that no amount of 0% financing or desperate markdowns could disguise. The demand problem was undeniable. And the brand? No longer bulletproof.

This wasn’t just a commercial failure—it was a political one too. Musk’s full-throttle dive into right-wing politics, from gutting government agencies with DOGE to cringeworthy rallies in swing states, has scorched Tesla’s image. Showrooms have become protest zones. “De-Musk America” hashtags trend online. Bumper stickers now apologise for owning a Tesla before the CEO, as some put it, “went rogue.”

Once hailed as the iPhone of cars, Tesla now feels more like the MySpace of EVs—still around, but fading fast. What once symbolised sleek innovation now drags the baggage of Musk’s personal crusades. And consumers are voting with their wallets.

Wall Street took note. Shares plunged. Forecasts were slashed. Even the faithful started whispering: Tesla’s biggest risk may not be competition—it may be its CEO. For years, Musk's antics were the secret sauce. This week, they resembled toxic waste.

DOGE Is Done: Musk’s Washington Exit Strategy




Musk came to Washington promising to make government efficient. Instead, he made it chaotic—and now even Trump’s inner circle is slamming on the brakes.

After months of wielding the axe at the Department of Government Efficiency, Musk is stepping away. Officially, it’s to refocus on business. Unofficially? The White House is tired of the spectacle. What began as a bold experiment in bureaucracy-slashing became a migraine for the administration.

Cabinet secretaries were blindsided by Musk’s erratic decrees. Agency heads were whiplashed by weekend email purges. DOGE accidentally cut Ebola prevention programmes and became a rallying cry for Democrats. By the time Musk’s handpicked judge lost in Wisconsin, even Trump loyalists were done.



His 130-day stint as a special government employee is quietly winding down. Behind closed doors, the consensus is clear: thanks for the fireworks, Elon—now please stop setting them off under our feet.

Trump still praises Musk as a “patriot”, but insiders say he’s tired of being blindsided by Musk’s unfiltered X posts and Pentagon-level leaks. The exit may be soft, but it’s still an exit. And as ever, while Musk is excellent at breaking things, someone else must always clean up the DOGE mess.

Musk’s $21 Million Faceplant in Wisconsin



The Wisconsin Supreme Court race was more than just another contest for Musk—it was a power play. And it ended in disaster.
Liberal Judge Susan Crawford defeated conservative Brad Schimel in the most expensive judicial election in American history. Musk, through his America PAC, pumped over $21 million into the race to tilt the court’s balance. Instead, he earned a 10-point drubbing, a liberal majority on the bench, and a state that rejected his brand of billionaire overreach.

This wasn’t about jurisprudence—it was about control. Musk wanted a conservative court to pave the way for redistricting, voter suppression, and favourable rulings for Tesla. What he got was a backlash.

Crawford’s campaign cast Musk as a cartoon villain: a plutocrat with a federal job trying to buy justice with million-dollar cheques. The pitch worked. The electorate recoiled. Musk’s gimmicks—cash-for-signatures and seven-figure giveaways—only inflamed the opposition.
Inside the White House, the tone shifted. Trump still offers polite soundbites, but advisers are already planning Musk’s exit. After Wisconsin, the question isn’t if Musk should go—it’s how fast.

His response to the defeat? A bitter X post blaming “the long con of the left” while grasping for relevance by touting an unrelated voter ID amendment. It sounded less like defiance and more like damage control. The message from Wisconsin was unmistakable: justice is not for sale. Not even to the richest man on Earth.

Tariffquake: A Billionaire’s Brutal Thursday


And then came the economic gut-punch.

On 3 April, markets convulsed as Trump unveiled sweeping new tariffs. The result: $208 billion evaporated from the fortunes of the world’s 500 richest people—the fourth-largest one-day drop in history. Musk alone lost $11 billion, pushing his 2025 losses to a brutal $110 billion.
Tesla’s stock fell 5.5% as investors weighed the cost of new tariffs on batteries and key materials. Just days earlier, there had been optimism that Musk would refocus on Tesla after his DOGE detour. That optimism didn’t survive Thursday.

The irony? Musk had lobbied for tariffs to weaken Chinese EV rivals. But the ones that landed hit Tesla too—raising costs across its global supply chain and inviting Chinese retaliation on Tesla’s Shanghai operations. Musk got his moat. It just happens to be full of crocodiles.

The Week Musk Fell Back to Earth


For a man who once promised to die on Mars—not crash in Madison—this was a humbling re-entry. In seven days, Musk lost political capital, investor confidence, billions in net worth, and the illusion that he was untouchable. The techno-myth cracked. The aura of inevitability dimmed.

Wisconsin said no. The markets said no. Even Trump now refers to him in the past tense. Musk isn’t finished—he still commands satellites, factories, and platforms—but momentum, the one thing he always had, is no longer on his side. This wasn’t the end of Elon Musk. But it may have been the end of Musk as inevitable. A week where the man who wanted to bend the future finally met gravity. Out of juice. Out of favour. And out of Wisconsin—with a brutal, billion-dollar thud.

And like the house, gravity always wins.

But then again, betting against Elon Musk has always been a fool’s game.

After all, this is the man whose adolescent sci-fi dreams now materialise in steel and fire. The Starship booster caught by Mechazilla wasn’t just a feat of engineering—it was a statement: the laws of physics may be immutable, but costs, constraints, and timelines are negotiable. SpaceX’s fully reusable Starship threatens to do to spaceflight what container ships did to global trade. Launch costs are plummeting. Cargo-to-orbit is scaling. The sci-fi is becoming logistics.

For all the critics who see Musk as a privileged charlatan riding on others’ coattails, his peers beg to differ. Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang admitted Musk’s xAI achieved in 19 days what would take most firms over a year. From Zip2 to PayPal, from Tesla to Starlink, from Neuralink to reusable rockets—Musk’s fingerprints are all over the architecture of tomorrow.

Gravity may win the day. But history tends to side with the mad ones who dare to fight it. As Steve Jobs once said: “People who are crazy enough to think they can change the world are the ones who do.” After all, it would be foolish to bet against a man who can catch rockets from space. Metaphorically of course.