Elon Musk Is One of the Few Winners from Trump Auto Tariffs | Hacker News Reader

Elon Musk Is One of the Few Winners from Trump Auto Tariffs

bloomberg.com

20 pointstlogan15 comments

A many people warned that tariffs and the very political exceptions made to them are rip for corruption:

https://www.slowboring.com/p/trumps-tariffs-mean-big-opportu...

https://www.cnn.com/2024/11/26/business/tariff-exclusions-tr...

Basically tariffs and their exceptions introduce a lot of room for political considerations and there are many ways to influence those political considerations.

https://archive.ph/cDEy8

Is he really the winner?

His usual customers don’t like his actions with DOGE and the MAGAs don’t like EVs

Yes. TSLA comes out of this better today than yesterday.

TSLA seems to be down today. Cars sold, only time will tell.

Up 3% so far today.

In the long term it’s the sold cars that count.

My first thought was that this was a gift to Elon.

But also Rivian.

https://www.axios.com/2025/03/27/trump-auto-tariffs-vehicles...

Honda is a big winner with 3 million cars a year and 70% of production in the US. US auto workers will also win as plants will ramp up production and overtime.

Side note, fascinating to see the evolution of the headline from Bloomberg:

Initial Headline...

  Most carmakers stand to lose as trumps tariffs spread the pain

When posted at HN...

  Elon Musk Is One of the Few Winners from Trump Auto Tariffs

Current...

  Musk’s Tesla One of the Only Winners From Trump Car Tariffs

Biggest loser is of course, car buyers.

Used car sellers might be winners.

Short term.

In long term this increases competition with European car makers (equalises tariffs) which in theory should result in better cars.

Why would this increase competition? Tesla is going to sell automatically. They don’t have to compete as hard.

You are forgetting EU is charging higher tariff for US vehicles, this basically equalises which equalises the game.

This gives a push for likes of VW catch up with Tesla and start making competitive cars

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