‘Economists have been flabbergasted’ at how White House calculated tarif...

‘It’s a Disaster’: Global Markets Slide After Trump Unveils Tariffs

 

‘It’s a Disaster’: Global Markets Slide After Trump Unveils Tariffs

 

The initial market reaction suggested that the scale of the tariffs on Wednesday had come as a surprise to investors in the United States and overseas.

 

Joe Rennison Danielle Kaye River Akira Davis

By Joe RennisonDanielle Kaye and River Akira Davis

Joe Rennison and Danielle Kaye reported from New York, and River Akira Davis reported from Tokyo.

https://www.nytimes.com/2025/04/02/business/trump-tariffs-global-stock-markets.html

Published April 2, 2025

Updated April 3, 2025, 2:37 a.m. ET

 

Markets around the world shuddered on Thursday after President Trump announced across-the-board 10 percent tariffs on all U.S. trading partners except Canada and Mexico, as well as even higher tariffs on dozens of America’s other main trading partners.

 

Futures on the S&P 500, which allow investors to trade the index outside normal trading hours, slumped over 3 percent. Asian markets fell sharply, with benchmark indexes dropping more than 3 percent in Japan, and nearly 2 percent in Hong Kong and South Korea.

 

The slide came after Mr. Trump, speaking at a ceremony at the White House on Wednesday, announced a new 10 percent base line tariff on all imports as well as country specific taxes on goods from a host of other countries. Those included a 34 percent tax on Chinese imports, on top of 20 percent in tariffs he recently put on China, and 20 percent on goods coming from the European Union and 24 percent on Japanese imports.

 

The initial market reaction suggested that the scale of the tariffs on Wednesday had come as a surprise, and analysts were still trying to figure out how the figures had been derived.

 

“I think the numbers are shockingly high compared to what people were expecting and it is inexplicable in many ways,” said Peter Tchir, head of macro strategy at Academy Securities. “I think it’s a disaster.”

 

The administration had adjusted its estimates of the tariffs imposed on the United States to include adjustments for what it deemed currency manipulation or even other taxes, with analysts questioning the analytical basis for doing so.

 

“Trump is going to war with countries on this,” said Andrew Brenner, head of international fixed income at National Alliance Securities. “It’s ridiculous. It shows no comprehension as to what he is doing to other countries. And it is going to hurt the U.S.”

 

Stock markets globally have been choppy in recent weeks, as investors have been whipsawed by the administration’s mixed tariff messages. Markets in Asia tumbled earlier this week ahead of the anticipated unveiling of tariffs, with Japan’s Nikkei 225 falling into a correction on Monday.

 

Japan was jolted again on Thursday, with analysts and trade experts in Tokyo caught off guard by Mr. Trump’s announcement of a 24 percent tariff on Japanese products. A number of business executives in Tokyo had earlier said they were optimistic that Japan’s low average tariff rate might help save it from high tariffs.

 

The uncertainty around the tariff levels has left investors unable to assess the potential ramifications for consumers, businesses and the broader economy.

 

The U.S. tariff rate on all imports is now around 22 percent, from 2.5 percent in 2024, said Olu Sonola, the head of U.S. Economic Research at Fitch Ratings. That rate was last seen around 1910, he said.

 

“This is a game changer, not only for the U.S. economy but for the global economy. Many countries will likely end up in a recession,” Mr. Sonola said. “You can throw most forecasts out the door.”

 

Through Wednesday, the S&P 500 had fallen 7.7 percent below its most recent peak in February. From that peak on Feb. 19 through the end of March, 10 of 11 sectors have fallen.

 

The Nasdaq Composite index, which is chock-full of the tech stocks that have come under pressure during the latest bout of selling, has tumbled even further, down almost 13 percent since its peak in December. Futures on the index tumbled over 4 percent Wednesday evening.

 

The Russell 2000 index of smaller companies more exposed to the ebb and flow of the economy, and therefore arguably more of a bellwether for American businesses, is more than 16 percent below its peak in November.

 

In Asia, the stocks of a wide range of companies including technology and semiconductor giants, as well as major auto exporters, stumbled. Shares of Japanese automaker Toyota fell more than 5 percent on Thursday, while South Korea’s Samsung Electronics fell close to 3 percent.

 

Japan’s Nikkei 225 index is down more than 13 percent this year, with analysts expecting a weaker dollar and stronger yen — on top of tariffs — to cut deeply into the profits of big Japanese exporters.

 

Signs of worry have also been evident in the rapid rise in the price of gold. Investors have flocked to the precious metal, sending it 19 percent higher in the first three months of the year, its biggest quarterly rise since 1986.

 

And while many investors worry about the inflationary effect of tariffs, falling bond yields and a declining U.S. dollar suggest that most are more worried about waning economic growth.

 

The dollar slid as Mr. Trump spoke from the White House Rose Garden.

 

Some investors had hoped that the tariff announcement on Wednesday would cure some of the uncertainty in the financial markets. But few truly expected the news to mark the end of Mr. Trump’s tariff talk and with it an end to the stock market volatility.

 

Uncertainty has “paralyzed” investors, consumers and business leaders, further pressuring the economy as activity slows, said George Goncalves, head of U.S. macro strategy at MUFG Securities.

 

Ahead of the announcement, prices in the equity options market, where investors can place bets that protect them against sharp moves in the stock market, suggested a consensus view that volatility would remain, said Mandy Xu, head of derivatives market intelligence at Cboe Global Markets.

 

“Investors no longer see tariffs as a one-time event risk, but an always-present risk,” she said, adding that the current expectation in the market is for volatility to persist, “given ongoing tariff and growth worries.”

 

Joe Rennison writes about financial markets, a beat that ranges from chronicling the vagaries of the stock market to explaining the often-inscrutable trading decisions of Wall Street insiders. More about Joe Rennison

 

Danielle Kaye is a business reporter and a 2024 David Carr Fellow, a program for journalists early in their careers. More about Danielle Kaye

 

River Akira Davis covers Japan, including its economy and businesses, and is based in Tokyo. More about River Akira Davis

What Trump's new tariffs mean for the world economy and the stock market...

Trump's tariffs: What just happened?

The world’s biggest economies reacted swiftly on Thursday to President Trump’s latest round of tariffs, warning of retaliation against what they described as a counterproductive move.

 

Ana SwansonAlan Rappeport and Tony Romm

https://www.nytimes.com/live/2025/04/03/business/trump-tariffs

 

Here’s the latest.

The world’s biggest economies reacted swiftly on Thursday to President Trump’s latest round of tariffs, warning of retaliation against what they described as a counterproductive move.

 

As markets in Asia dropped sharply on Thursday in response to the tariffs, China vowed to take countermeasures to “safeguard its own rights and interests.” Its state media described the tariffs as “self-defeating bullying.”

 

In Brussels, Ursula von der Leyen, the European Commission president, said in an early morning news conference that the bloc would be united in its response to the tariffs.

 

“If you take on one of us, you take on all of us,” she said.

 

The response from Japan, the largest overseas investor in the United States, was more restrained. Prime Minister Shigeru Ishiba called the tariffs “extremely regrettable.” But he refrained from talk of retaliation, saying that his government was trying to impress upon the Trump administration that Japan is helping the United States to industrialize again.

 

Mr. Trump’s move, a significant escalation, is likely to drive up prices for American consumers and manufacturers. While he had said for weeks that he would impose “reciprocal tariffs,” the specifics went far beyond what many experts had expected.

 

Business groups, trade experts, economists, Democratic and even a few Republican lawmakers swiftly denounced the tariffs, while some industries scrambled to understand how they would be affected.

 

Mr. Trump framed his policies as a response to a national emergency, saying that tariffs were needed to boost domestic production. Others in the United States were less enthusiastic about what lay ahead.

 

Mr. Trump could have tried to fix the rules governing global trade, which he says allies have abused to the detriment of the U.S. economy and American consumers, said Eswar Prasad, a professor of trade policy at Cornell University.

 

Instead, he said, “Trump has chosen to blow up the system governing international trade.”

 

Here’s what else to know:

 

Steep rates: The United States will subject Chinese goods to a staggering new tariff of 34 percent, on top of the tariffs that Mr. Trump had already imposed since January. The European Union’s tariff was set at 20 percent, Japan’s at 24 percent and India’s at 26 percent. Mr. Trump said little about the methodology behind those calculations.

 

Markets fall: The initial market reaction suggested that the scale of the tariffs had come as a surprise. Futures on the S&P 500 slumped over 3 percent, as benchmark indexes in Asia dropped more than 3 percent in Japan and nearly 2 percent in Hong Kong and South Korea.

 

China’s response: The country’s Commerce Ministry said the new U.S. tariffs were “based on subjective and unilateral assessments,” and described them as “unilateral bullying.” The tariffs have likely dimmed hope of a meeting between the country’s top leader, Xi Jinping, and Mr. Trump, who has expressed interest in a summit.

 

Auto tariffs: New tariffs on all automobiles made outside the United States took effect, adding to previous tariffs on steel, aluminum and other imports that Mr. Trump has imposed since returning to office in January.

'The most economically illiterate speech I have ever heard', analyst say...

Morning opening: A broken stick

 

07.16 BST

https://www.theguardian.com/world/live/2025/apr/03/europe-reaction-donald-trump-tariffs-live-news

Morning opening: A broken stick

Jakub Krupa

European Commission president Ursula von der Leyen warned this morning that the global economy “will massively suffer” as a result of tariffs imposed by US president Donald Trump last night, as she said the EU was “prepared to respond.”

 

Despite Trump’s direct attack on “pathetic” EU as he imposed 20% tariffs on the bloc, von der Leyen still expressed hopes that the relationship could “move from confrontation to negotiation,” as she warned “there seems to be no order in disorder.”

 

But it wasn’t immediately obvious that there was any genuine prospect of that happening.

 

Instead the EU and the individual member states are now scrambling to consider how to manage the situation.

 

French president Emmanuel Macron has called an emergency meeting with sectors affected by Trump’s tariffs this afternoon.

 

German economic daily Handelsblatt published new estimates this morning that the US tariffs – including 25% on car imports – could cost German carmakers BMW, Mercedes and Volkswagen as much as €11 bn given Germany is the largest EU car exporter to the US. For perspective, it’s just under a third of the total value of German automotive exports to the US at €36.8 bn.

 

But the worry is not only about the immediate impact, but the more long term consequences of last night’s decision.

 

Addressing Europeans directly, von der Leyen said “I know that many of you feel let down by our oldest ally,” as she stressed the need to think about what’s next.

 

Or as Moritz Schularick, president of the Kiel Institute for the World Economy, put it to Handelsblatt:

 

“There is this memorable picture of a stick that you can bend and that comes back again and again. But at some point, if you bend too much, the stick breaks.

 

I believe that in terms of trust in the United States, something has broken down in recent weeks that will not come back so quickly.”

 

It’s Thursday, 3 April 2025, it’s Jakub Krupa here, and this is Europe Live.

 

Good morning. Fasten your seatbelts, it’s going to be a lively one.

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The Great Replacement

 

The Great Replacement

The Great Replacement (French: grand remplacement), also known as replacement theory or great replacement theory, is a white nationalist[4] far-right conspiracy theory espoused by French author Renaud Camus. The original theory states that, with the complicity or cooperation of "replacist" elites, the ethnic French and white European populations at large are being demographically and culturally replaced by non-white peoples—especially from Muslim-majority countries—through mass migration, demographic growth and a drop in the birth rate of white Europeans. Since then, similar claims have been advanced in other national contexts, notably in the United States. Mainstream scholars have dismissed these claims of a conspiracy of "replacist" elites as rooted in a misunderstanding of demographic statistics and premised upon an unscientific, racist worldview. According to the Encyclopædia Britannica, the Great Replacement "has been widely ridiculed for its blatant absurdity."

 

While similar themes have characterized various far-right theories since the late 19th century, the particular term was popularized by Camus in his 2011 book Le Grand Remplacement. The book associates the presence of Muslims in France with danger and destruction of French culture and civilization. Camus and other conspiracy theorists attribute recent demographic changes in Europe to intentional policies advanced by global and liberal elites (the "replacists") from within the Government of France, the European Union, or the United Nations; they describe it as a "genocide by substitution".

 

The conspiracy theory found support in Europe, and has also grown popular among anti-migrant and white nationalist movements from other parts of the West; many of their adherents maintain that "immigrants [are] flocking to predominantly white countries for the precise purpose of rendering the white population a minority within their own land or even causing the extinction of the native population". It aligns with (and is a part of) the larger white genocide conspiracy theory[b] except in the substitution of antisemitic canards with Islamophobia.This substitution, along with a use of simple catch-all slogans, has been cited as one of the reasons for its broader appeal in a pan-European context, although the concept remains rooted in antisemitism in many white nationalist movements, especially (but not exclusively) in the United States.

 

Although Camus has publicly condemned white nationalist violence, scholars have argued that calls to violence are implicit in his depiction of non-white migrants as an existential threat to white populations. Several far-right terrorists, including the perpetrators of the 2019 Christchurch mosque shootings, the 2019 El Paso shooting, the 2022 Buffalo shooting and the 2023 Jacksonville shooting, have made reference to the "Great Replacement" conspiracy theory. American conservative media personalities, including Tucker Carlson and Laura Ingraham, have espoused ideas of a replacement. Some Republican politicians have endorsed the theory in order to appeal to far-right members of the Republican Party and as a way of signalling their loyalty to Donald Trump.

 

Background

Renaud Camus developed his conspiracy theory in two books published in 2010 and 2011, in the context of an increase in anti-immigrant rhetoric in public discourse during the previous decade. Europe also experienced an escalation in Islamic terrorist attacks during the 2000s–2010s, and a migrant crisis in the years 2015–2016, which exacerbated tensions and prepared public opinion for the reception of Camus's conspiracy theory. As the latter depicts a population replacement said to occur in a short time lapse of one or two generations, the migrant crisis was particularly conducive to the spread of Camus's ideas while the terrorist attacks accelerated the construction of immigrants as an existential threat among those who shared such a worldview.

 

Camus's theme of a future demise of European culture and civilization also parallels a "cultural pessimistic" and anti-Islam trend among European intellectuals of the period, illustrated in several best-selling and straightforwardly titled books released during the 2010s: Thilo Sarrazin's Germany Abolishes Itself (2010), Éric Zemmour's The French Suicide (2014) or Michel Houellebecq's Submission (2015).

 

Concept of Renaud Camus

The "Great Replacement" conspiracy theory was developed by French author Renaud Camus, initially in a 2010 book titled L'Abécédaire de l'in-nocence ("Abecedarium of no-harm"),[c] and the following year in an eponymous book, Le Grand Remplacement (introduction au remplacisme global).[d] Camus has claimed that the name Grand Remplacement "came to [him], almost by chance, perhaps in a more or less unconscious reference to the Grand Dérangement of the Acadians in the 18th century. As an epigraph to the later book, Camus chose Bertolt Brecht's quip from the satirical poem Die Lösung that the easiest thing to do for a government which had lost the confidence of its people would be to choose new people.

 

According to Camus, the "Great Replacement" has been nourished by "industrialisation", "despiritualisation" and "deculturation"; the materialistic society and globalism having created a "replaceable human, without any national, ethnic, or cultural specificity", what he labels "global replacism". Camus claims that "the great replacement does not need a definition," as the term is not, in his views, a "concept" but rather a "phenomenon".

 

In Camus's theory, the indigenous French people ("the replaced") is described as being demographically replaced by non-white populations ("the replacing [peoples]"—mainly coming from Africa or the Middle East—in a process of "peopling immigration" encouraged by a "replacist power".

 

Camus frequently uses terms and concepts related to the period of Nazi-occupied France (1940–1945). He for instance labels "colonizers" or "Occupiers"[h] people of non-European descent who reside in Europe, and dismisses what he calls the "replacist elites" as "collaborationist". In 2017 Camus founded an organization named the National Council of European Resistance, in a self-evident reference to the World War II National Council of the Resistance (1943–1945). This analogy to the French Resistance against Nazism has been described as an implicit call to hatred, direct action or even violence against what Camus labels the "Occupiers; i.e. the immigrants". Camus has also compared the Great Replacement and the so-called "genocide by substitution" of the European peoples to the Holocaust.

 

Claimed influences

Camus cites two influential figures in the epilogue of his 2011 book The Great Replacement: British politician Enoch Powell's apocalyptic vision of future race relations—expressed in his 1968 "Rivers of Blood" speech—and French author Jean Raspail's depiction of the collapse of the West from an overwhelming "tidal wave" of Third World immigration, featured in his 1973 novel The Camp of the Saints.

 

Camus also declared to The Spectator magazine in 2016 that a key to understanding the "Great Replacement" can be found in his 2002 book Du Sens. In the latter he wrote that the words "France" and "French" equal a natural and physical reality rather than a legal one, in a cratylism similar to Charles Maurras's distinction between the "legal" and the "real country".[i]During the same interview, Camus mentioned that he began to imagine his conspiracy theory back in 1996, during the redaction of a guidebook on the department of Hérault, in the South of France: "I suddenly realized that in very old villages [...] the population had totally changed too [...] this is when I began to write like that."

 

Similar themes

Despite its own singularities and concepts, the "Great Replacement" is encompassed in a larger and older "white genocide" conspiracy theory, popularized in the US by neo-Nazi David Lane in his 1995 White Genocide Manifesto, where he asserted that governments in Western countries were intending to turn white people into "extinct species". Scholars generally agree that, although he did not father the theme, Camus indeed coined the term "Great Replacement" as a slogan and concept, and eventually led it to its fame in the 2010s.

 

The idea of "replacement" under the guidance of a hostile elite can be further traced back to pre-WWII antisemitic conspiracy theories which posited the existence of a Jewish plot to destroy Europe through miscegenation, especially in Édouard Drumont's antisemitic bestseller La France juive (1886). Commenting on this resemblance, historian Nicolas Lebourg and political scientist Jean-Yves Camus suggest that Renaud Camus's contribution was to replace the antisemitic elements with a clash of civilizations between Muslims and Europeans. Also in the late 19th century, imperialist politicians invoked the Péril jaune (Yellow Peril) in their negative comparisons of France's low birth-rate and the high birth-rates of Asian countries. From that claim arose an artificial, cultural fear that immigrant-worker Asians soon would "flood" France. This danger supposedly could be successfully countered only by increased fecundity of French women. Then, France would possess enough soldiers to thwart the eventual flood of immigrants from Asia. Maurice Barrès's nationalist writings of that period have also been noted in the ideological genealogy of the "Great Replacement", Barrès contending both in 1889 and in 1900 that a replacement of the native population under the combined effect of immigration and a decline in the birth rate was happening in France.

 

Scholars also highlight a modern similarity to European neo-fascist and neo-Nazi thinkers from the immediate post-war, especially Maurice Bardèche, René Binet and Gaston-Armand Amaudruz, and to concepts advanced from the 1960s onward by the French Nouvelle Droite.The associated and more recent conspiracy theory of "Eurabia", published by British author Bat Ye'or in her 2005 eponymous book, is often cited as a probable inspiration for Camus's "Great Replacement". Eurabia theory likewise involves globalist entities, that are led by both French and Arab powers, conspiring to Islamize Europe, with Muslims submerging the continent through immigration and higher birth rates. The conspiracy theory also depicts immigrants as invaders or as a fifth column, invited to the continent by a corrupt political elite.

 

Analysis

Demographic statistics

While the ethnic demography of France has shifted as a result of post-WWII immigration, scholars have generally dismissed the claims of a "great replacement" as being rooted in an exaggeration of immigration statistics and unscientific, racially prejudiced views. Geographer Landis MacKellar criticized Camus's thesis for assuming "that third- and fourth- generation 'immigrants' are somehow not French."Researchers have variously estimated the Muslim population of France at between 8.8% and 12.5% in 2017, and less than 1% in 2001,making a "replacement" unlikely according to MacKellar.

 

Racial connotations

In the words of scholar Andrew Fergus Wilson, whereas the islamophobic Great Replacement theory can be distinguished from the parallel antisemitic white genocide conspiracy theory, "they share the same terms of reference and both are ideologically aligned with the so-called '14 words' of David Lane ["We must secure the existence of our people and a future for white children"]." In 2021, the Anti-Defamation League wrote that "since many white supremacists, particularly those in the United States, blame Jews for non-white immigration to the U.S.", the Great Replacement theory has been increasingly associated with antisemitism and conflated with the white genocide conspiracy theory. Scholar Kathleen Belew has argued that the Great Replacement theory "allows an opportunism in selecting enemies", but "also follows the central motivating logic, which is to protect the thing on the inside [i.e. the preservation and birth rate of the white race], regardless of the enemy on the outside."

 

According to Australian historian A. Dirk Moses, the great replacement theory is a form of psychological projection in which Europeans—who enacted settler-colonial projects entailing the elimination and replacement of native populations by settler societies—fear the reverse may happen to them.

 

In German discourse, Austrian political scientist Rainer Bauböck questioned the conspiracy theorists' use of the terms "population replacement" or "exchange" (Bevölkerungsaustausch). Using Ruth Wodak's analysis that the slogan needs to be viewed in its historical context, Bauböck has concluded that the conspiracy theory is a reemergence of the Nazi ideology of Umvolkung ("ethnicity inversion").

 

Popularity

Camus's tract for his 2014 "day of anger" demonstration against the "great replacement": "No to the change of people and of civilization, no to antisemitism"

The simplicity and use of catch-all slogans in Camus's formulations—"you have one people, and in the space of a generation you have a different people"—as well as his removal of antisemitism from the original neo-Nazi "white genocide" conspiracy theory, have been cited as conducive to the popularity of the "Great Replacement" in Europe.

 

In a survey led by Ifop in December 2018, 25% of the French subscribed to the conspiracy theory; as well as 46% of the responders who defined themselves as "Gilets Jaunes" (Yellow Vest protesters).In another survey led by Harris Interactive in October 2021, 61% of the French believed that the "Great Replacement" will happen in France; 67% of the respondents were worried about it.

 

The theory has also become influential in far-right and white nationalist circles outside of France. The conspiracy theory has been cited by Canadian far-right political activist Lauren Southern in a YouTube video of the same name released in July 2017.Southern's video had attracted in 2020 more than 686,000 views and is credited with helping to popularize the conspiracy theory. Counter-jihad Norwegian blogger Fjordman has also participated in spreading the theory. It has also been promoted by the German edition of The Epoch Times, a far-right Falun Gong-associated newspaper.

 

Prominent right-wing extremist websites such as Gates of Vienna, Politically Incorrect, and Fdesouche [fr] have provided a platform for bloggers to diffuse and popularize the theory of the "Great Replacement". Among its main promoters are also a wide-ranging network of loosely connected white nationalist movements, especially the Identitarian movement in Europe, and other groups like PEGIDA in Germany.

 

Political influence

Europe

France

Much of the European spread of the Great Replacement (French: Grand Remplacement) conspiracy theory rhetoric is due to its prevalence in French national discourse and media. Nationalist right-wing groups in France have asserted that there is an ongoing "Islamo-substitution" of the indigenous French population, associating the presence of Muslims in France with potential danger and destruction of French culture and civilization.

 

In 2011, Marine Le Pen evoked the theory, claiming that France's "adversaries" were waging a moral and economic war on the country, apparently "to deliver it to submersion by an organized replacement of our population". In 2013, historian Dominique Venner's suicide in Notre-Dame de Paris, in which he left a note outlining the "crime of the replacement of our people" is reported to have inspired the far-right Iliade Institute's main ideological tenet of the Great Replacement.[85] Referring to the conspiracy theory, Marine Le Pen publicly praised Venner, claiming that his "last gesture, eminently political, was to try to awaken the French people".

 

In 2015, Guillaume Faye gave a speech at the Swedish Army Museum in Stockholm, in which he claimed there were three societal things being used against Europeans to carry out a supposed Great Replacement: abortion, homosexuality and immigration. He asserted that Muslims were replacing white people by using birthrates as a demographic weapon.

 

In June 2017, a BuzzFeed News investigation revealed three National Front candidates subscribing to the conspiracy theory ahead of the legislative elections. These included Senator Stéphane Ravier's personal assistant, who claimed the Great Replacement had already started in France. Publishing an image of blonde girl next to the caption "Say no to white genocide", Ravier's aide politically charged the concept further, writing "the National Front or the invasion".

 

By September 2018, in a meeting at Fréjus, Marine Le Pen closely echoed Great Replacement rhetoric. Speaking of France, she declared that "never in the history of mankind, have we seen a society that organizes an irreversible submersion" that would eventually cause French society to "disappear by dilution or substitution, its culture and way of life". Following the Christchurch mosque shootings, Le Pen falsely denied knowledge of the theory.

 

Former National Assembly delegate Marion Maréchal, who is a junior member of the political Le Pen family, is also a proponent of the theory. In March 2019, in a trip to the U.S., Maréchal evoked the theory, stating "I don't want France to become a land of Islam". Insisting that the Great Replacement was "not absurd", she declared the "indigenous French" people, apparently in danger of being a minority by 2040, now wanted their "country back".

 

National Rally's serving president Marine Le Pen, who is the aunt of Maréchal, has been heavily influenced by the Great Replacement. The Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung has described the conspiracy theory creator Renaud Camus as Le Pen's "whisperer". In May 2019, National Rally spokesman Jordan Bardella was reported to use the conspiracy theory during a televised debate with Nathalie Loiseau, after he argued that France must "turn off the tap" from the demographic bomb of African immigration into the country.

 

In June 2019, journalist and author Éric Zemmour pushed the concept in comparison to the Kosovo War, claiming "In 1900, there were 90% Serbs and 10% Muslims in Kosovo, in 1990 there were 90% Muslims and 10% Serbs, then there was war and the independence of Kosovo". Zemmour, author of The French Suicide, has repeatedly described "the progressive replacement, over a few decades, of the historic population of our country by immigrants, the vast majority of them non-European".[97] Later that month, Marion Maréchal joined Zemmour in invoking the Great Replacement in relation to the Balkan region, stating "I do not want my France to become Kosovo" and declared that the changing demographics of France "threatens us" ("nous menace") and that this was increasingly clear.[96] Zemmour ran for president in 2022 and continued to extensively promote the theory during his campaign.[98] He finished in fourth place in the first round of the election, taking 7,07% of the vote.

 

Austria

Identitäre Bewegung Österreich (IBÖ), the Austrian branch of the Identitarian movement, promotes this theory, citing a "great exchange"[j] or replacement of the population that supposedly needs to be reversed. In April 2019, Heinz-Christian Strache campaigning for his FPÖ party ahead of the 2019 European Parliament election endorsed the conspiracy theory. Claiming that "population replacement" in Austria was a real threat, he stated that "We don't want to become a minority in our own country". Compatriot Martin Sellner, who also supports the theory, celebrated Strache's political use of the Great Replacement.

 

Belgium

In September 2018, Schild & Vrienden [nl], an extremist Flemish youth organization, were reported to be endorsing the conspiracy theory. The group, claiming that native populations of Europe were being replaced by migrants; they proposed an end to all immigration, forced deportation of non-whites, and the founding of ethnostates.The following month, VRT detailed how the organization was discussing the Great Replacement on secretive chat channels, and using the conspiracy theory to promote Flemish ethnic identity.

 

In March 2019, Flemish nationalist Dries Van Langenhove of the Vlaams Belang party repeatedly stated that the Flemish people were "being replaced" in Belgium, posting claims on social media which endorsed the Great Replacement theory.

 

Denmark

Use of the Great Replacement (Danish: Store Udskiftning) conspiracy theory has become common in right-wing Danish political rhetoric. In April 2019, Rasmus Paludan, leader of the Hard Line party, which is widely associated with the Great Replacement,[109] claimed that by the year 2040 ethnic Danish people would be approaching to be a minority in Denmark, having been outnumbered by Muslims and their descendants. During a debate for the 2019 European Parliament elections, Paludan used the concept to justify a proposal to ban Muslim immigration and deport all Islamic residents from the country, in what Le Monde described as Paludan "preaching the 'great replacement theory'".

 

In June 2019, Pia Kjærsgaard (Danish People's Party) invoked the conspiracy theory while serving as Speaker of the Danish Parliament. After the alleged encouragement of Muslim communities to "vote red", for the Social Democrats; Kjærsgaard asked "What will happen? A replacement of the Danish people?".

 

Finland

Far-right Finns Party representatives and ministers have used the word "great replacement" (Finnish: Väestönvaihto) in their writings.Finns Party Speaker of the Parliament Jussi Halla-Aho and the party leader Riikka Purra have also promoted the theory. Halla-aho stated that it is ”dishonest to say that the great replacement is not going on, that it would not be rapid, and that it would not continue just as long as it is allowed to continue.” Riikka Purra wrote ”In any case, I use the term great replacement myself, because that is what this is, as long as this is being actively perpetrated”, Purra wrote. "As long as immigration policy is active and promotes immigration, the Finnish population will be exchanged for another".In October 2023 four men were convicted of offences committed with terrorist intent. According to the prosecutor, the defendants were motivated by the idea of a conspiracy of the government and Jewish people to replace the native population. Police said the potential targets of the attack were political decision-makers.

 

Germany

Ex-SPD politician Thilo Sarrazin is reported to be one of the most influential promoters of the Great Replacement, having published several books on the subject, some of which, such as Germany Abolishes Itself, are in high circulation. Sarrazin has proposed that there are too many immigrants in Germany, and that they supposedly have lower IQs than Germans. Regarding the demographics of Germany, he has claimed that in a century ethnic Germans will drop in number to 25 million, in 200 years to eight million and in 300 years: three million.

 

In May 2016, Alternative for Germany (German: Alternative für Deutschland, AfD) deputy leader Beatrix von Storch used a language reminiscent of the theory when she claimed that plans for a mass exchange of populations ("Massenaustausch der Bevölkerung") had long been made.

 

In April 2017, a few months before he assumed the leadership of the AfD, Alexander Gauland released a press statement regarding the issue of family reunification for refugees, in which he claimed that "Population exchange in Germany is running at full speed". In October 2018, following Beatrix von Storch's lead, Bundestag member Petr Bystron said the Global Compact for Migration was part of the conspiracy to bring about systemic population change in Germany.

 

In March 2019, Vice Germany reported how AfD MP Harald Laatsch [de] attempted to justify and assign blame for the Christchurch mosque shootings, in relation to his "The Great Exchange"[j] theory, by asserting that the shooter's actions were driven by "overpopulation" from immigrants and "climate protection" against them. Laatsch also claimed that the climate movement, who he labelled "climate panic propagators", had a "shared responsibility" for the massacre, and singled out child activist Greta Thunberg.

 

Similarly, right-wing publicist Martin Lichtmesz [de] denied that either Anders Behring Breivik's 2011 manifesto, which referred to the Eurabia variant of the "white genocide" narrative, or Brenton Tarrant's 2019 The Great Replacement manifesto, had any connection to the theory. Claiming that it was, in fact, not a conspiracy theory at all, Lichtmesz said both Breivik and Tarrant were reacting to a real phenomenon; a "historically unique experiment" of a "Great Exchange"[j] of people.

 

Hungary

Prime Minister Viktor Orbán and his political party Fidesz in Hungary have been associated with the conspiracy theory over the course of several years. The Sydney Morning Herald detailed Orbán's belief in and promotion of the Great Replacement as being central to the modern right-wing politics of Europe. In December 2018, he claimed the "Christian identity of Europe" needed saving, and labelled refugees traveling to Europe as "Muslim invaders". In a speech, Orbán asserted: "If in the future Europe is to be populated by people other than Europeans, and we accept this as a fact and see it as natural, then we will effectively be consenting to population replacement: to a process in which the European population is replaced".

 

He has also stated: "In all of Europe there are fewer and fewer children, and the answer of the West is migration," concluding that "We Hungarians have a different way of thinking. Instead of just numbers, we want Hungarian children." ThinkProgress described the comments as pushing a version of the theory. In April 2019, Radio New Zealand published insight that Orban's plans to cut taxes for large Hungarian families could be linked with fears of the Great Replacement.

 

Ireland

A 2019 Lidl advertisement that featured a white Irish woman, her Afro-Brazilian partner and their mixed race son was targeted by former journalist Gemma O'Doherty as part of an attempt at a "Great Replacement". After facing online harassment the family decided to leave Ireland.[123][124][125] The "Great Replacement" has also been used in Ireland in opposition to direct provision centres, used to house asylum seekers.

 

Writing in 2020, Richard Downes said that "Rather than seeing the increase in non-Irish people living and making their lives here as being a normal part of a modern European country, some of the new nationalists see it as a conspiracy to overwhelm Ireland with foreigners. For many of them the conspirators include the Irish government, NGOs, the EU and the UN. They believe that these organisations want to replace Irish people with brown and black people from abroad."

 

The term "great replacement" was also used when the RTÉ News featured the three first babies born in 2020, born to Polish, Black and Indian mothers; journalist Fergus Finlay saying "I don't care about the vulgar abuse, but I really do believe that these hatemongers should be prosecuted when they incite others to hatred and violence against people whose only crime is their skin colour or religion. I find it hard to understand why the State hasn't acted already against these cruel ideologues who think they can say whatever they like under the banner of free speech. They may be small in number now, and on the surface they may just seem bonkers, but we've been here before. Political movements have been built on hatred of the other, and we know the damage they have caused."

 

Garda Commissioner (national chief of police) Drew Harris spoke about far right groups in 2020, saying that "Irish groups [believing] in the great replacement theory" had plans "to disrupt key State institutions and infrastructure. This included Dublin Port, high profile shopping areas such as Grafton Street in Dublin, Dáil Éireann and Government departments."

 

Some participants in the 2022–2023 Irish anti-immigration protests such as Hermann Kelly and Derek Blighe support a Great Replacement theory, as well as referring to the influx of immigrants as an "invasion" and a "plantation".

 

The current Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni has endorsed the Great Replacement ideology. Deputy Prime Minister Matteo Salvini of Italy (2018–2019) has repeatedly adopted the theme of the Great Replacement. In May 2016, two years before his election to office, he claimed "ethnic replacement is underway" in Italy in an interview with Sky TG24. Accusing nameless, well-funded organizations for importing workers that he named "farm slaves", he stated that there was a "lucrative attempt at genocide" of Italians.

 

In April 2023, the Minister of Agriculture, Food Sovereignty and Forests Francesco Lollobrigida remarked to a trade union conference that "Italians are having fewer children, so we're replacing them with someone else. [We say] yes to helping births, no to ethnic replacement. That's not the way forward".

 

Netherlands

In April 2015, writing on the publishing website GeenStijl, scholar of Islam Hans Jansen used Great Replacement rhetoric, suggesting that it was an "undisputed" fact that among the European Union's governing elite there was a common consensus that Europeans were "no good and can be better replaced". In May 2015, Martin Bosma, a Dutch parliament Representative for the Party for Freedom (PVV), released his book Minority in their own land [nl]. Invoking the conspiracy theory, Bosma wrote about a growing 'a new population' of immigrants which lent itself to an apparently 'post-racial Multicultural State of Salvation'.

 

In March 2017, Thierry Baudet, leader of the right wing Forum for Democracy (FvD) party, promoted the theory after he claimed that the country's so-called elite were deliberately "homeopathically diluting" the Dutch population, in a speech about "national self-hatred". He said there was a plot to racially mix the ethnic Dutch with "all the people of the world", so that there would "never be a Dutchman again".

 

In January 2018, PVV Representative Martin Bosma endorsed the Great Replacement theory, and one of its key propagators, after meeting with Renaud Camus at a PVV demonstration in Rotterdam and tweeting his support. Filip Dewinter, a leading member of the Flemish secessionist Vlaams Belang party, who had traveled to the Netherlands on the day of the protest to meet with Camus, named him as a "visionary man" to the media.

 

Party for Freedom politician Geert Wilders of the Netherlands supports the notion of a Great Replacement occurring in Europe.In October 2018, Wilders invoked the conspiracy theory, claiming the Netherlands was "being replaced with mass immigration from non-western Islamic countries" and Rotterdam being "the port of Eurabia". He claimed 77 million, mainly Islamic immigrants would attempt to enter Europe over the course of half a century, and that white Europeans would cease to exist unless they were stopped. In 2019, The New York Times reported how Camus's demographic-based alarmist theories help fuel Wilders and his Party for Freedom's nativist campaigning.

 

In September 2018, Dutch author Paul Scheffer analyzed the Great Replacement and its political developments, suggesting that Forum for Democracy and Party for Freedom were forming policy regarding the demography of the Netherlands through the lens of the conspiracy theory.

 

Spain

The far-right party Vox has been described as circulating the theory for its discourse about low natality rates in Spaniards compared to migrants. According to journalist Antonio Maestre of El Diario, such an ideology is shared between Vox and some extreme strains of Catalan nationalism who fear replacement by Spanish-speakers.

 

United Kingdom

According to November 2018 research from the University of Cambridge, 31% of Brexit voters believe in the conspiracy theory compared to 6% of British people who oppose Brexit.[

 

In July 2019, left-wing English musician and activist Billy Bragg released a public statement which accused fellow singer-songwriter Morrissey of endorsing the theory. Bragg suggested "that Morrissey is helping to spread this idea—which inspired the Christchurch mosque murderer—is beyond doubt".

 

Prior to the 2024 United Kingdom general election, videos of non-white people in London with captions such as "This is not Iran" spread on social media. Hope not Hate researcher Patrik Hermansson described the videos as prime examples of dog whistles due to using language and imagery that direct viewers to the conspiracy theory without explicitly referencing it. He said, "[The videos] are dangerous because they often avoid moderation and appear acceptable by seeming neutral in how they present reality".

 

Turkey

Leader of the Victory Party Ümit Özdağ uses a Turkish version of the theory. He previously argued that Turkey will be a "Migrantland" (Göçmenistan) unless Kemal Kılıçdaroğlu wins the 2023 Turkish presidential election.

LEITÃO AMARO LARGA BOMBA SOBRE IMIGRAÇÃO (REAÇÃO)

Suella Braverman on how people smugglers run the English channel

Elon Musk Backlash Turns Into Global Sales Slump for Tesla

 

Elon Musk Backlash Turns Into Global Sales Slump for Tesla

 

Mr. Musk’s involvement in right-wing politics contributed to a 13% drop in deliveries in the first quarter, including steep declines in E.V.-friendly places like Norway.

 

Melissa Eddy Jack Ewing

By Melissa Eddy and Jack Ewing

Melissa Eddy reported from Oslo, and Jack Ewing from New York.

https://www.nytimes.com/2025/04/02/business/tesla-sales-elon-musk.html

April 2, 2025

Updated 3:50 p.m. ET

 

If there is anyplace Tesla should be thriving, it’s Norway. Electric vehicles account for more than 90 percent of new car sales in the Scandinavian country, and buyers here are among the most sophisticated in the world when it comes to understanding the nuances of batteries, charging and range.

 

So it hardly bodes well for Tesla that its sales in Norway, as measured by registrations, have declined more than 12 percent so far this year. Sales for the first three months of the year were even worse in Denmark, France, the Netherlands and Sweden.

 

In fact, Tesla’s sales have been on a steep downward trend around the world: The company said on Wednesday that its global sales in the first quarter fell 13 percent from a year earlier.

 

Tesla said that it delivered nearly 337,000 cars during the quarter. That is down from 387,000 in the first three months of 2024 and fewer than in any period since the second quarter of 2022.

 

The company’s tepid sales at a time when electric vehicle sales were rising around the world reflected a number of serious problems, not least a consumer backlash against the prominent role that Elon Musk, the chief executive of Tesla, is playing in the Trump administration.

 

Geir Rognlien Elgvin, an urban planner with the City of Oslo, bought his first Tesla in 2013, months after they were introduced in Norway. He has toured the company’s battery Gigafactory in Nevada. He met Mr. Musk when the executive was still mostly known for wanting to address climate change with electric cars and his rocket company, SpaceX.

 

But as Mr. Musk drifted to right-wing politics, Mr. Elgvin’s enthusiasm waned. And he grew concerned about the company’s data security policy.

 

Several months ago, he swapped his Tesla for a battery-powered cargo bike and a shared electric Volkswagen. “I would never drive a Tesla again,” he said. “It’s a question of ethics.”

 

Last year, Tesla accounted for nearly a quarter of car sales in Norway, far more than any other carmaker. But in the first two months of this year Tesla slipped to third place behind Volkswagen and Toyota. Teslas made up just 9 percent of new cars sold, less than half of its market share a year earlier.

 

For Tesla, the decline in the world’s most advanced electric vehicle market is ominous, signaling problems to come elsewhere. “Norway is always a good place to look into the future,” said Will Roberts, who follows electric vehicles at Rho Motion, a research firm.

 

There are several explanations for Tesla’s sales decline. The company depends on two models, the Model Y sport utility vehicle and the Model 3 sedan, for almost all of its sales. The Cybertruck pickup, Tesla’s newest and most polarizing model, has been plagued by recalls and has not sold as well as Mr. Musk predicted it would.

 

Tesla once set the standard for battery range, software and driver-assistance technology. But traditional carmakers have become more adept at building electric vehicles and have begun to catch up to Tesla in technology. Competitors like Volkswagen, Volvo and BMW — and, outside the United States, BYD, Xpeng and other Chinese manufacturers — offer a diverse selection of luxury sedans, minivans, pickups and compact cars.

 

“Tesla pretty much all of these years has been alone in Europe and the U.S.,” said Felipe Munoz, global analyst at JATO Dynamics, a research firm. “That’s not the case anymore.”

 

Some of the sales decline could be due to buyers who are waiting for an upgraded version of the Model Y, analysts said. Deliveries of that version began in March in Norway, which perhaps explains why the company’s sales last month were down only 1 percent from March 2024.

 

But Mr. Munoz pointed out that sales of the Model 3, which was updated in 2023, have also fallen, though not as much.

 

In February, registrations in Europe of the older Model Y fell 56 percent, while registrations of the Model 3 fell 14 percent, according to JATO. The declines occurred even though overall sales of electric vehicles in Europe jumped 25 percent.

 

Mr. Musk’s support for right-wing parties in Europe and his role as President Trump’s cost-cutter in chief have not helped Tesla’s image. He has been the focus of protests around the United States and Europe, and his activities have alienated some customers. In most countries, buyers of electric vehicles lean left politically.

 

“I hate Musk, I hate Trump, I hate this entire company,” said Kao Lew, a 75-year-old resident of New York’s Harlem neighborhood who was protesting outside a Manhattan Tesla dealership last week.

 

In Sweden, the country’s largest insurer, Folksam, said Wednesday that it had sold its stake in the U.S. automaker because Tesla’s approach to employee rights violated the company’s investment criteria. Folksam had been invested in Tesla since 2013 and its stake was worth 1.6 billion Swedish krona, or $160 million.

 

Mechanics with the union IF Metall have been on strike in Sweden for more than a year, over Tesla’s refusal to sign a collective agreement.

 

More than anger, many Norwegians feel ashamed for supporting a company that they see as reneging on its commitment to making personal transportation better for the planet and whose chief executive they say has abandoned the principles of democracy.

 

Andrea Fresk’s Tesla is caked with a thick layer of late-winter grime, a state of neglect she said reflected her ambivalence toward the vehicle that she and her husband took out a 10-year loan to buy in 2019.

 

After Mr. Musk bought the social media company Twitter, she began feeling increasingly ashamed about owning the Tesla, but it got worse after Mr. Musk became a regular presence in the Trump administration.

 

“Then it became really hard to defend having this car,” said Ms. Fresk, a psychologist with Norway’s public family services.

 

Some of her friends have already sold their Teslas, she said. But because she and her husband are still paying off the car and it runs smoothly, she is not replacing it for now.

 

Rebil, Norway’s largest used-car dealer, has seen an increase in the number of drivers selling their Teslas in recent months. But that means prices are low, and despite “Tesla Shame,” sales have been brisk.

 

“I’ve had a lot of customers concerned about Tesla,” said William Oestby, a salesman with Rebil. But when he quizzes them on price, range, size and the hauling capability they are seeking, he said, Tesla is usually the best deal on offer. “It’s hard to find something that compares,” he said.

 

That may soon change. Over the next two years, Ford Motor, BMW, Mercedes-Benz and other automakers will introduce their next generation of electric vehicles. These cars, some which will be on sale before the end of this year, will incorporate advances in battery technology that allow greater driving range and faster charging. These automakers say their cars will be better than what Tesla is offering.

 

The traditional automakers “have all made a lot of strides forward,” Mr. Roberts of Rho Motion said. “Previously consumers might have struggled to find other options than

Tesla that really competed. That’s now not the case.”

 

Anusha Bayya contributed reporting from New York, and Henrik Pryser Libell from Oslo.

 

A correction was made on April 2, 2025: An earlier version of this story misspelled the last name of a Harlem resident who was protesting at a Tesla showroom in Manhattan last week. His name is Kao Lew, not Kao Leu.

When we learn of a mistake, we acknowledge it with a correction. If you spot an error, please let us know at nytnews@nytimes.com.Learn more

 

Melissa Eddy is based in Berlin and reports on Germany’s politics, businesses and its economy. More about Melissa Eddy

 

Jack Ewing writes about the auto industry with an emphasis on electric vehicles. More about Jack Ewing

Trump Tells Inner Circle That Musk Will Leave Soon

 

Column | Corridors

Trump Tells Inner Circle That Musk Will Leave Soon

 

The president is pleased with Elon Musk, but the decision comes as the tech mogul increasingly looks like a political liability.

 

By Rachael Bade

04/02/2025 11:17 AM EDT

https://www.politico.com/news/magazine/2025/04/02/trump-musk-leaving-political-liability-00265784

 

Rachael Bade is POLITICO's Capitol bureau chief and senior Washington columnist. She is a former co-author of POLITICO Playbook and co-author of "Unchecked: The Untold Story Behind Congress's Botched Impeachments of Donald Trump." Her reported column, Corridors, illuminates how power pulses through Washington, from Capitol Hill to the White House and beyond.

 

President Donald Trump has told his inner circle, including members of his Cabinet, that Elon Musk will be stepping back in the coming weeks from his current role as governing partner, ubiquitous cheerleader and Washington hatchet man.

 

The president remains pleased with Musk and his Department of Government Efficiency initiative, but both men have decided in recent days that it will soon be time for Musk to return to his businesses and take on a supporting role, according to three Trump insiders who were granted anonymity to describe the evolving relationship.

 

Musk’s looming retreat comes as some Trump administration insiders and many outside allies have become frustrated with his unpredictability and increasingly view the billionaire as a political liability, a dynamic that was thrown into stark relief Tuesday when a conservative judge Musk vocally supported lost his bid for a Wisconsin Supreme Court seat by 10 points.

 

It also represents a stark shift in the Trump-Musk relationship from a month ago, when White House officials and allies were predicting Musk was “here to stay” and that Trump would find a way to blow past the 130-day time limit.

 

One senior administration official said Musk is likely to retain an informal role as an adviser and continue to be an occasional face around the White House grounds. Another cautioned that anyone who thinks Musk is going to disappear entirely from Trump’s orbit is “fooling themselves.”

 

The transition, the insiders said, is likely to correspond to the end of Musk’s time as a “special government employee,” a special status that temporarily exempts him from some ethics and conflict-of-interest rules. That 130-day period is expected to expire in late May or early June.

 

Musk’s defenders inside the administration believe that the time is right for a transition, given their view that there’s only so much more he can cut from government agencies without shaving too close to the bone.

 

But many others say he’s an unpredictable, unmanageable force who has had issues communicating his plans with Cabinet secretaries and through the White House chain of command led by chief of staff Susie Wiles, frequently sending them into a frenzy with unexpected and off-message comments on X, his social-media platform — including sharing unvetted and uncoordinated plans to gut federal agencies.

 

The political threat Musk poses was highlighted Tuesday after Democrats seized on Musk’s roughly $20 million investment in the Wisconsin race, with some openly calling it a referendum on the polarizing mogul.

 

Trump, however, had already started easing the glide path starting more than a week before the election — including at a March 24 Cabinet meeting where he told attendees that Musk would be transitioning out of the administration, according to one of the insiders, who did not attend the meeting but was briefed on the comments. A senior administration official confirmed Trump discussed Musk’s transition at the meeting.

 

Immediately after making the announcement, Trump invited reporters and cameras in for the tail end of the meeting, where he lavished praise on Musk, who attended the meeting wearing a red MAGA hat. Cabinet secretaries — many of whom had clashed with Musk just weeks before over Musk’s bull-in-a-china-shop approach to cutting their departments — in turn jumped in to hail his bureaucracy-slashing campaign.

 

“Elon, I want to thank you — I know you’ve been through a lot,” Trump said, mentioning death threats and the spate vandalism directed at the cars built by Tesla before calling him “a patriot” and “a friend of mine.”

 

Both men subsequently hinted publicly at a transition. When Fox News’ Bret Baier asked Musk on Thursday whether he’d be ready to leave when his special government employee status expires, he essentially declared mission accomplished: “I think we will have accomplished most of the work required to reduce the deficit by $1 trillion within that time frame.”

 

On Monday night, Trump told reporters that “at some point Elon’s going to want to go back to his company,” adding: “He wants to. I’d keep him as long as I could keep him.”

 

“As the President said, this White House would love to keep Elon around for as long as possible,” White House spokesperson Harrison Fields said Tuesday as election results from Wisconsin rolled in. “Elon has been instrumental in executing the President’s agenda, and will continue this good work until the President says otherwise.”

 

But many close to Trump are increasingly relieved that Musk is expected to soon move on from his central role at Trump’s side and that the litany of DOGE surprises — which have ranged from a weekend email blast demanding federal workers list their work output to accidental cuts to Ebola prevention programs — might finally be coming to a close.

 

That’s to say nothing of their concerns about Musk as a political liability who has served as a rallying point for fractured Democrats.