Musk's fallout with Trump dents his richest person status, Tesla suffers $150 billion in losses

Tesla CEO Elon Musk’s online feud with US President Donald Trump has caused a heavy dent to his status as the world’s richest person. The spat has led to a whopping loss to Tesla’s market cap.

Roughly $150bn has been wiped out in market value of the electric car company Tesla. The drop of 14 per cent in one of the worst days in months. For readers estimate, it exceeds the total market capitalisation of Starbucks and several other major US-listed corporations.

Investors had put in big amounts of money into Tesla shares after Donald Trump came to power as Musk was considered extremely close to the president.

What is the Trump-Musk spat about?

The fallout of the bromance between Trump and Musk comes at the onset of the presentation of the 'Big Beautiful Bill', which Musk calls the ‘Big Ugly Bill,’ in the Senate later in June or early July.

Through a series of tweets, Musk highlighted how the already poor fiscal health of the nation is at risk with the increased defence spending of the ‘Big Beautiful Bill’.

“We have a $2 trillion deficit. It keeps growing. Our interest payments are higher than our defence department budget," posted Musk, sharing an excerpt of the interview with Fox News.

Trump took to his social media truth Social and responded to Musk by saying, “The easiest way to save money in our Budget, Billions and Billions of Dollars, is to terminate Elon’s Governmental Subsidies and Contracts. I was always surprised that Biden didn’t do it!”

Notably, the Bill was passed in the House of Representatives with a narrow split of 215-214 on May 22. The fallout between the Former DOGE head and President Trump will lead to a loss of momentum for the bill, which will be up for consideration in the Senate later in June or early July.