Elon Musk Is Among Trump’s Key Advisors The reason for this is that Musk, the richest person in the world, has also been tapped to head the newly created Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) with Vivek Ramaswamy. This position suggests he is one of Trump’s key advisors and has the ability to influence his policy decisions. To illustrate this, the New York Times reported that Musk is set to get office space in the White House Complex. His position of prominence has also pressured the stocks of companies that are on the wrong side of policies that Trump and Musk seem set to back. This has also led some companies to quickly pivot on their strategies and public stances. For instance, JPMorgan Chase (JPM) dropped its lawsuit against Tesla, while Rivian (RIVN) settled its 4-year-old trade secret lawsuit with the Elon Musk-run company a few weeks after the November election. Meta Platforms (META) and Amazon (AMZN)have scaled back their diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) programs, and the former even ended its third-party fact-checking program. Reports of TikTok’s U.S. operations being sold to Musk don’t look utterly unbelievable given the way the winds are blowing. Tesla Stock Has Come Off Its Highs Meanwhile, Tesla stock has come off its record highs and is almost flat for the year to date. Although it has since rebounded, one reason for its cooling performance is its dismal 2024 delivery report. For the first time in history, Tesla reported a year-over-year drop in annual deliveries. This came in contrast to Tesla’s Q3 earnings call in October, when the company expressed confidence that its deliveries would rise on a yearly basis. TSLA Stock 2025 Forecast Tesla remains a polarizing stock. Of the 38 analysts actively covering Tesla, 12 rate it as a “Strong Buy” and two as a “Moderate Buy.” 14 analysts rate it as a “Hold” while 10 rate it as a “Strong Sell.” It carries a mean target price of $309.78 with a Street-high and Street-low target price of $515 and $120, respectively. Morgan Stanley analyst Adam Jonas – a long-time Tesla bull – has raised his bull case target price on Tesla to $800. However, his base case target price of $430 implies single-digit returns over the next year. It is quite unusual for any company of Tesla’s size to have such disparity in its target prices, but with Tesla, such anomalies are more of a norm than an exception. Valuing Tesla has been a challenge, with analysts divided on whether it is an automaker or a tech stock. Tesla’s $1.2 trillion market capitalization is over four times that of Toyota (TM), the world’s largest automaker. In fact, Tesla is valued higher than all leading automakers put together.