Elon Musk has a target on his back after he became an outspoken supporter of Donald Trump.
The Left has turned him into their bogeyman.
And Elon Musk lowered the boom on Gavin Newsom for pulling this dirty trick.
California snubs Tesla with new electric vehicle rule
Tesla is the only electric vehicle maker that’s found any sort of organic success.
Chinese companies are propped up by their government and the rest of the auto industry has floundered with their electric models.
Democrats are pushing for the mass adoption of electric vehicles but they’re giving Tesla, the most successful company in the industry, the cold shoulder.
Tesla has fought efforts by the United Auto Workers (UAW) to unionize the company while Detroit’s Big 3 automakers are under the control of the UAW, a powerful ally of the Democrat Party.
The range on the Left against Tesla CEO Elon Musk has exploded since he became a public backer of President-elect Donald Trump.
President Joe Biden included a $7,500 tax credit for buying or leasing most electric vehicles in the Inflation Reduction Act.
Trump is planning to repeal that tax credit to extend and expand his landmark 2017 tax cuts.
California Governor Gavin Newsom is leading the charge on banning gas-powered vehicles to force drivers in his state to go electric.
He announced that California would create its own tax credit for electric vehicles to replace the one in the Inflation Reduction Act if Trump repeals it.
Newsom’s office told Bloomberg News that Tesla would be excluded from the proposed tax credit.
“It’s about creating the market conditions for more of these car makers to take root,” Newsom’s office said in a statement.
Elon Musk fires back at California over electric vehicle rule
Musk slammed California’s proposal in a post on his social media platform X.
“Even though Tesla is the only company who manufactures their EVs in California!” Musk wrote on X. “This is insane.”
More than half of electric vehicle sales in California are Teslas.
This is another case of Newsom playing political games against someone who’s turned into his political enemy.
Musk moved Tesla’s headquarters from California to Texas in 2021 during the pandemic but the automaker still has its biggest factory in Fremont, California.
The Tesla CEO said the “final straw” was an order to shut down the company’s Fremont factory over pandemic lockdown orders.
Musk relocated his other companies, SpaceX and X, out of California for Texas over a state law that required teachers to hide gender transitions from parents.
Wedbush senior analyst Dan Ives said that this was a fight that Newsom started over politics.
“This is clearly a political move of Newsom and California towards Musk which now has a front seat to the Trump White House and will be a key player in ultimately getting these federal tax credits wiped away among a myriad of other things on the federal front,” Ives explained.
Musk is pushing for the Inflation Reduction Act’s electric vehicle tax credit to be repealed.
Representative Ro Khanna (D-CA) called on Newsom to include Tesla in the potential tax credit.
“Tesla makes over 550,000 vehicles in Fremont in my district & employs over 20,000,” Khanna wrote on X. “Let’s not play politics with keeping manufacturing in California. It would be foolish to exclude Tesla.”
Gavin Newsom has made it clear he wants to include Elon Musk in his fight with the incoming Trump administration.
