Double blow from Trump and CrowdStrike, Tesla drops 4% on "Black Friday"

First, with Trump's threat to withdraw policies favorable to the electric vehicle industry, followed by the largest IT system crash in history caused by a bug in CrowdStrike software, Tesla experienced a "Black Friday." The stock price fell nearly 5% on Friday, wiping out most of the gains for the month and hitting a new low since July 2nd.

Other electric vehicle stocks also declined on Friday. Rivian, which had dropped nearly 3% intraday, fell about 0.9%, Lucid, which had dropped over 3% intraday, fell nearly 2%, Workhorse fell 11.6%, ChargePoint and EVgo, which operate electric vehicle charging networks, fell nearly 8% and over 6% intraday, closing down 4.6% and nearly 2.5% respectively. Among the Chinese new energy vehicle companies listed in the US, ZEEKR fell over 3%, Li Auto fell over 2%, Nio fell over 1%, while XPeng, which had fallen nearly 3% on Thursday, rebounded nearly 0.4%.

The day before the decline in Tesla and other electric vehicle stocks, on the evening of July 18th, former US President Trump officially accepted the Republican presidential nomination and delivered a speech outlining his policy proposals. Some media outlets noted the bearish message on electric vehicles conveyed in Trump's speech.

According to Xinhua News Agency, Trump promised in his speech that if re-elected, he would push for a new round of tax cuts, strengthen border security, and maintain the dominance of traditional energy sources. He vowed that if elected president, on his "first day in office," he would terminate Biden's electric vehicle policies, revitalize the US domestic auto manufacturing industry, and threaten to impose high tariffs on imported cars. He also stated his intention to strengthen US oil and natural gas drilling and abandon the Biden administration's new energy policies.

Trump fiercely criticized the Biden administration's policies, pointing directly to issues such as soaring inflation, illegal immigration, and international turmoil. He said, "Americans are facing an inflation crisis that makes life unbearable, eroding the income of the working class and low-income families in unprecedented ways." He accused illegal immigrants of "destroying our country" and stated that he would close the border, continue building the US-Mexico border wall, and thus end the "illegal immigration crisis."

Interestingly, Tesla's stock price had previously benefited from CEO Musk's support for Trump. Wall Street News mentioned this week that analysts believe Musk's support for Trump has also played a role in driving up Tesla's stock price. Trump has been critical of electric vehicles in the past, and Musk's endorsement may help Tesla gain more acceptance among conservative groups A recent opinion poll shows that about two-thirds of conservative voters would not consider buying an electric car, while about two-thirds of liberal voters would.

On the day Tesla's stock price fell, this Friday, Musk revealed on his social media platform X, "We have deleted Crowdstrike (software) from all systems," but did not specify which of his companies took action, nor did he explain how his companies were affected by IT system downtime.

However, some media outlets reported on Friday that due to a global IT system outage, some production lines at Tesla's facilities in Texas and Nevada were temporarily shut down. Another media outlet cited internal Tesla emails stating that Tesla informed employees on Friday morning, Eastern Time, that "Windows hosts, servers, laptops, and manufacturing equipment are down, with users seeing a blue screen on their devices."

On Friday, Microsoft CEO Nadella posted on X that the software update released by CrowdStrike on Thursday affected global IT systems, and Microsoft is working closely with the industry to safely bring the systems back online. Musk warned in response to this post that disruptions in IT systems have caused "the global automotive supply chain to grind to a halt."