Tesla just dropped its Q1 2025 earnings and the news isn’t great, as sales and profits have fallen significantly and missed already-low expectations. And in the earnings report, the company has issued what seems to be an admission that its own CEO’s actions are to blame.

It’s been a rough time for Tesla employees lately. The company’s mission is an admirable one: to accelerate the world’s transition to sustainable transportation. Many employees joined the company with that mission in mind, wanting to do something positive for the world.

But in recent times, the highest-profile employee of the company, its CEO and largest individual shareholder Elon Musk, has moved away from that mission. He spent huge sums from his personal wealth to campaign for an anti-EV political candidate, and is now actively participating in politics as an ally to those anti-EV forces and spreading climate misinformation along the way.

He’s also famously vindictive and Tesla’s board refuses to rein him in as he works to destroy the company.

So what is a Tesla employee to do, in this case? On the one hand, they want to do what’s right for the company. On the other hand, they don’t want to attract the ire of their boss who wants to do what’s wrong for the company. When your livelihood is at stake, sometimes you’ll choose to just keep your head down, keep working the best you can, and hope in vain that at some point the CEO might change his mind and stop acting like an idiot, or the board might finally step in for the good of the company. (Or, alternately, if you have other options, you might quit to make a statement, like many executives have)

However, we’ve seen some instances of some Tesla employees trying to do something, anything, to cry out to the world that all of this isn’t normal. And one example of that comes from Tesla’s earnings report today.

Tesla says tariffs will harm it

It’s right there in the third paragraph of the summary at the beginning of the document:

Uncertainty in the automotive and energy markets continues to increase as rapidly evolving trade policy adversely impacts the global supply chain and cost structure of Tesla and our peers.

This sort of statement is not a surprise to see in a quarterly report in the environment we’re currently in. The US stock market and economy as a whole are showing increasingly worrying signs, almost entirely due to the flailing actions of the ignoramuses who somehow find themselves in the Oval Office (despite that there exists a clear legal remedy stopping insurrectionists from holding office in the US). 

These actions have included the announcement of several tariffs (even though that is the purview of Congress), seemingly determined randomly through a dumb formula that didn’t even use the right numbers, and which seem to change every day (as one would expect when the person implementing them is senile and was profoundly stupid even before he went senile).

This idiotic flailing has produced the expected response: retaliatory tariffs, distrust from the international community, less availability of goods domestically, chaos among the business community, and pushing nations we consider as our rivals closer to the rest of the world.

Businesses, on the whole, have tried to stick to factual statements in their earnings reports and business forecasts. But despite that these statements are generally dry, the message remains clear: tariffs will increase costs for everyone and make business more difficult.

And Tesla’s statement is similarly dry, pointing to the uncertainty of ever-changing tariff decisions and how they will affect supply chains and cost. This is especially true for Tesla Energy, which will be affected much more than its car business, as Tesla also acknowledged today, stating “the current tariff landscape will have a relatively larger impact on our Energy business compared to automotive.”

But for Tesla, this is still exceptional given that the company’s moonlighting CEO, who spends little time working on Tesla business and is otherwise occupied with his twitter addiction, stealing Tesla resources for his private AI company, and trying to shut down the Environmental Protection Agency. Along with all this, Musk is also an advisor in the very administration that is making Tesla’s business difficult.

Musk has stated his opposition to tariffs, but he himself has to walk a thin line and occasionally downplay his language, given his self-professed “love” for Mr. Trump. And, despite this supposed opposition, he still remains one of the largest financial backers of the tariff advocate in question.

But Musk’s politics are also harming the company

But tariffs aren’t the only thing that will make Tesla’s business difficult, as Tesla acknowledged today in its letter. It continued to say:

This dynamic, along with changing political sentiment, could have a meaningful impact on demand for our products in the near-term.

Again, a rather dry statement elucidating a very significant problem with the company at the moment.

It’s not so much that political sentiment about EVs is changing, as EV sales continue to grow globally, despite headlines falsely suggesting otherwise. It’s sentiment against Tesla that is changing, largely due to Musk’s involvement in politics.

The main driver of Tesla’s recent sales decline has been Musk’s high-profile political advocacy, which has included support for German neo-Nazis and agreeing with a defense of Hitler’s actions in the Holocaust, among many other white supremacist statements. This has driven protests against the company, embarrassed owners and pushed many customers away.

It shouldn’t have to be said that allying a company’s brand with neo-Nazis is a bad political decision, especially so if you, as an individual, are so tied to the brand.

In fact, this is something that Tesla acknowledged very early in its existence, as the company used to make a very intentional effort not to make EVs political, hoping to be able to sell to as broad of an audience as possible. Musk seems to have forgotten that directive sometime during his ongoing twitter addiction (an addiction so bad that he has now overpaid for the company not once, but twice).

This isn’t the first time Tesla has had to do this

But this isn’t the first time Tesla has had to call out its own CEO’s actions. As the Musk problem has continued to get worse, Tesla has said similar things multiple times in recent months.

In March, Tesla’s policy team sent a letter to the US Trade Representative urging the USTR to “consider the downstream impacts” of proposed actions. One of those downstream impacts includes retaliatory tariffs, and given the high profile nature of the attachment between Tesla’s CEO and another social media addicted clown who’s implementing said tariffs, there was a lot of talk about Tesla becoming target of those tariffs.

And sure enough, Tesla has seen other governments retaliate against it. Canada has removed Tesla from some incentive programs and is investigating Tesla’s sudden incentive cash grab. The UK, one of the few territories where Tesla sales are not down, has also considered removing the company from incentive programs.

Tesla has also had to walk a thin line on EV incentives, stating that it supports killing EV incentives in the US because Musk said so (even though that would harm the company), while still lobbying for EV incentives overseas where the Musk/Trump stink isn’t overpowering the conversation.

So, in the end, it seems like a really tough time to be a Tesla employee. The company knows that its CEO is harming it, but the board won’t do anything about it, and speaking up too forcefully can get you fired. Pour one out for the employees, we hope you’re holding it down well enough.

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