As European automakers brace for a possible trade war waged by President Trump, they are working to ward off another threat on their home turf: the prospect of paying hundreds of millions of dollars to Tesla and Chinese competitors muscling in on their core markets. Under stricter European Union regulations taking effect this year, automakers … Read more
On Saturday last week, Germany offered a stark portrait of its political scene. It appears to be a nation grappling with its past, its future and an unsettling present. Thousands took to the streets of German cities, rallying against the rise of the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD). Yet, on the same day, another event … Read more
Tesla on Wednesday reported a sharp drop in profit for 2024 as rivals in China, Europe and the United States chipped away at its lead in the market for electric cars. The company, which is led by Elon Musk, said it made a profit of $2.3 billion during the last three months of 2024. That … Read more
Three weeks after a very public rift, the populist British politician Nigel Farage said on Wednesday that his relationship with Elon Musk was “fine” and that the two men had spoken just last week. Mr. Farage, in a brief interview with The New York Times, said that Mr. Musk, the world’s richest man, remained open … Read more
Britain’s populist party, Reform U.K., was expected to bring in more than $1.25 million dollars at a glitzy fund-raiser on Tuesday, a party official said, an extraordinary amount for a party that six months ago was on the fringe of national politics. The big-ticket, American-style event was the first major fund-raiser since Nigel Farage took … Read more
They are ripe for disruption. Well before Mr. Musk first backed the AfD, it had become the second most-popular party in Germany. The Social Democrats, the country’s oldest party which once routinely won more than 40 percent of the vote, are polling at a historic low of 16 percent ahead of next month’s election. The … Read more
Elon Musk told a gathering of the hard-right Alternative for Germany party this weekend that the country has “too much of a focus on past guilt,” an apparent effort to wipe away the long shadow of the Nazis that has influenced generations of Germans to quarantine extreme political parties from public life. “It’s good to … Read more
On his first full day back in the White House, President Trump reveled in his return to power and vowed to do what no president had ever done before. “We’re going to do things that people will be shocked at,” he declared. Of all the thousands of words that Mr. Trump uttered during his fact-challenged, … Read more
So was it a Hitler salute or wasn’t it? Speaking at President Trump’s inauguration event this week, Elon Musk slapped his right hand on his chest before shooting his arm diagonally upward, palm facing down. He did it twice. It looked a lot like the salute used in Nazi Germany and fascist Italy. But almost … Read more
The initial plan for retooling the federal government under President Trump started with three loyal billionaires: the banker Howard Lutnick, the tech leader Elon Musk and the entrepreneur Vivek Ramaswamy. Now, it’s down to one. Mr. Lutnick emerged as Mr. Trump’s pick to run the Commerce Department. Mr. Ramaswamy decided to step aside from the … Read more