The limits of Trump and Musk
Even the super-rich and the super-powerful can’t have it all their own way: Erich Honecker experienced it in the GDR in 1989 and dictator Assad in Syria in 2024.
And before that, Stalin, Hitler, Mussolini, Franco and many other top crooks. Donald Trump and Elon Musk are also experiencing more and more opposition, resistance and failures in the USA.
Musk’s Tesla cars are selling less and less. Many of his employees at his car factory in Grünheide are turning away in disappointment from their previous idol because he spent a lot of money on Trump’s re-election and on AfD propaganda. Worldwide, sales of Tesla cars are falling sharply after many years of steady growth. In Germany, you can see bumper stickers with the inscription: ‘I bought my Tesla before Musk supported Trump.’
Elon Musk once announced that his car business would “grow by 50 percent every year.” This goal seems to have receded into the “unreachable distance,” as the Süddeutsche Zeitung rightly wrote on 7 February 2025.
In January 2025, Tesla sales in this country fell by a whopping 60 per cent. There had already been a 10 per cent decline in Europe in 2024. The Model Y, built in Brandenburg, was still the best-selling car in Europe in 2023. In Germany, more and more companies are now announcing that they are no longer buying Tesla cars in protest against Musk’s policies: the Baden-Württemberg energy supplier Badenova, the Hamburg-based electricity provider Lichtblick, the drugstore chain Rossmann and the Lower Saxony-based eco-house builder Viebrockhaus.
In 2023, Tesla still sold 69,000 cars in Germany, but only 37,000 in 2024. Even in its home market of California, Tesla had to report 12 per cent fewer new registrations in 2024 than in the previous year. Elon Musk has become his own biggest business risk by chumming up with Trump’s authoritarian politics.
In the US, the Democrats are gradually recovering from their election defeat to Trump and are back as the opposition to Trump’s oligarchic policies. China, Canada and Mexico have successfully protested against Trump’s economically foolish tariff policy. The Palestinians in Gaza have no intention of becoming the 51st state of the USA. The EU will also defend itself against Trump’s tariff policy.
Bill Gates also speaks out against Trump’s racism in ‘Zeit’ of 6 February 2025 and announces resistance. He wants to prevent millions from dying as a result of Trump’s budget cuts to the WHO and development funds.
The misanthropic policies of Trump and Musk do not leave these powerful and rich people unaffected either. They too can only reap what they sow. Trump had to back down on Mexico and Canada in the first few days of his new term in office and postpone the announced tariffs. The international financial markets are also showing Trump and Musk their limits. Drivers can now also make politically important decisions. It is in their own hands.
Our European counterpoint to Trump and Musk was summed up by the Danish Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen: ‘Europe, our continent, is based on the idea that cooperation, not confrontation, will lead to peace, prosperity and a better existence.’
