Maybe the chainsaw wasn’t such a good idea.
Tesla (TSLA) CEO Elon Musk had quite a moment recently when he wielded a chainsaw to symbolize his plan to reduce government spending.
Musk, President Donald Trump’s close adviser and biggest campaign donor and head of the Department of Government Efficiency, has been responsible for firing thousands of federal workers.
A backlash has included boycotts of Tesla vehicles and violence against Tesla’s facilities and cars.
On Thursday the Justice Department unveiled charges against three individuals, alleging they attacked or tried to attack Tesla facilities in Colorado, Oregon and South Carolina.
Related: Elon Musk rides to Tesla’s defense
“If you read the news, it feels like Armageddon,” Musk said during an all-hands broadcast on his X social media platform. “I can’t walk past the TV without seeing a Tesla on fire. I understand if you don’t want to buy our product, but you don’t have to burn it down. That’s a bit unreasonable.”
The company’s shares are burning as well and Tesla owners are trading in their vehicles at record levels, CNBC reported, citing an analysis by national car shopping site Edmunds.
Elon Musk was the biggest donor to Donald Trump’s presidential campaign. (Photo by Brandon Bell/Getty Images)
Tesla bull calls on Musk to end crisis
The data from March represented “the highest ever share” it had seen for Tesla trade-ins toward new or used cars from dealerships selling other brands.
The competition is also breathing down Musk’s neck.
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In January, S&P Global Mobility found Tesla sales declined about 11% year over year in the U.S., while Ford, Chevrolet and Volkswagen bolstered their sales of EVs, picking up market share.
The longtime Tesla bull Dan Ives, analyst at the investment firm Wedbush, called the situation “a brand tornado crisis moment for Musk and Tesla. I loudly urge Musk and the board to step up, stop being silent, and help resolve this crisis forming at Tesla.”
Musk urged Tesla employees to “hang onto your stock” and said the price “goes up and it goes down, but actually it’s still the same company.”
Ed Ponsi sees the logic there as he looks beyond the smoke from those smoldering Teslas.
“The situation for Tesla might seem hopeless now, but not long ago another major brand was taking a beating,” the veteran trader said in his recent TheStreet Pro column. “Brewer Anheuser-Busch InBev (BUD) came under fire two years ago due to a controversial social media promotion for one of its most popular brands, Bud Light.”
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Back in 2023, Anheuser-Busch’s Bud Light was hit by a boycott following a social media promotion the brewski maker conducted with actress and TikTok personality Dylan Mulvaney, a transgender woman.
The video triggered a massive backlash from American conservatives, including singer and avid Trump supporter Kid Rock, who posted a video of himself wearing a MAGA hat and shooting unarmed cases of the beer with a machine gun.
In the month following the ad, Bud Light’s sales fell between 11% and 26%, while Anheuser-Busch’s sales fell about 1%. In May 2023 parent AB InBev’s stock price fell 20%, down enough for it to be classified as a bear stock by Forbes.
Trader Ponsi: Tesla could have a bright future
Videos on TikTok and Twitter circulated across the internet, depicting people who were smashing, throwing away, and driving over Bud Light bottles. Anheuser-Busch factories received bomb threats that forced certain factories to close.
But the climate started to change, including last year’s appeal by then-candidate Trump, who called for giving the company a “second chance” prior to a fundraiser with a company lobbyist.
“Fast forward to 2025, and shares of Anheuser-Busch are outperforming the indexes by a wide margin, gaining 26.26% year-to-date,” Ponsi said. “While the current Tesla controversy is very different from the Anheuser-Busch fiasco, there are some parallels.”
Ponsi cited diversification as one important similarity. AB InBev’s portfolio contains more than 500 beer brands, while Tesla has its Full Self-Driving technology, the Cybercab and the Optimus robot.
Related: Tesla sends dire warning about escalating the trade war
“Tesla could market robots, cars, semi-trucks and buses directly to companies and government agencies,” he said. “Taking everything into consideration, it’s possible that Tesla could have a bright future, even if the company’s public EV auto sales never fully recover.”
Tesla and AB InBev aren’t the only companies to be rocked by controversy, Ponsi noted. In 2010, BP’s (BP) Deepwater Horizon oil rig was responsible for the largest oil spill in U.S. history.
The spill was triggered by an explosion at a drilling platform in the Gulf of Mexico, owned by Transocean and leased and operated by BP. Eleven workers were killed in the blast.
Ponsi also cited a 2017 incident where a viral video showed a paying customer being dragged from a United Airlines (UAL) flight at Chicago O’Hare International Airport despite acknowledging that the man had done nothing wrong.
The passenger was a pulmonologist who refused to leave his seat when directed because he needed to see patients the following day. One video of the incident was shared 87,000 times and viewed 6.8 million times in less than a day.
“After the passage of time, those companies eventually recovered,” Ponsi said.
“If Tesla is to recover, it will also take time. Meanwhile, Tesla’s current controversy could allow investors an opportunity to buy this stock below $200 — a price that might look amazing further down the road.”
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