Investor's Corner
Tesla gets reprieve from tariffs as China pledges to cut auto import taxes
Tesla’s operations in China could be getting a reprieve soon, after Chinese President Xi Jinping announced that he would be cutting auto import taxes. During a speech at a business conference on Tuesday, Xi pledged to open China’s markets and improve conditions for foreign companies.
The new development came as the Chinese president was speaking at the Boao Forum for Asia on the Southern island of Hainan, according to a report from the Associated Press. Amid a trade dispute against the United States, Xi stated that China would be opening its doors wider. The president explicitly mentioned the auto industry in his speech, saying that China will be easing restrictions for foreign automakers.
“China’s door of opening up will not be closed and will only open wider. Beijing will significantly lower tariffs on auto imports this year and ease restrictions on foreign ownership in the auto industry as soon as possible,” Xi said.
China’s softened stance stands to benefit American automakers such as Tesla. Prior to Xi’s announcement, Tesla is operating in the country on a handicap, with its flagship vehicles — the Model S and the Model X — facing a steep 25% import tax, which causes the electric cars to be sold at higher prices than local competitors.
In a recent tweet, Tesla CEO Elon Musk described Xi’s announcement as a “very important action.”
This is a very important action by China. Avoiding a trade war will benefit all countries.
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) April 10, 2018
Elon Musk addressed this issue in a series of tweets to US President Donald Trump last month, with the Tesla CEO stating that operating a car business in China is akin to playing an unfair game.
“No US auto company is allowed to own even 50% of their own factory in China, but there are five 100% China-owned EV auto companies in the US. I am against import duties in general, but the current rules make things very difficult. It’s like competing in an Olympic race wearing lead shoes,” Musk tweeted.
Xi’s promise of easing restrictions on foreign ownership also stands to benefit Tesla’s manufacturing capability. China, after all, is widely speculated to be the country where Tesla is planning to manufacture its upcoming crossover SUV — the Model Y — as well as some of the Model 3. So far, Tesla and local Chinese officials are reportedly disagreeing about the ownership of the planned factory. With the lighter restrictions in place, however, the company could tap into a formidable workforce that could help Tesla achieve its ambitious manufacturing goals.
Prior to Xi’s announcement on Tuesday, US President Donald Trump also adopted a less confrontational rhetoric against China. In a tweet on Sunday, Trump stated that he and Xi would be friends regardless of what happens in the ongoing trade dispute. Trump also said that there is “great future for both countries.”
Overall, the recent developments in the US-China trade dispute are encouraging overall, according to IHS Markit Senior Director and Asia-Pacific Chief Economist Rajiv Biswas. In a statement to the AP, Biswas noted that Xi’s recent speech could create a good platform to launch a dialogue between the two countries.
“President Xi’s speech could create a very good platform to launch U.S.-China dialogue at the WTO to find a deal on intellectual property rights that will address US concerns. This would be a victory for the world trading system and an important step away from the abyss of rising global protectionism,” he said.
Elon Musk
SpaceX Starship just nailed something it’s never done before
SpaceX’s Starship flew successfully Friday, landing both stages and deploying its first Starlink V3 satellites.
Starship’s thirteenth test flight delivered exactly what SpaceX needed with a clean liftoff, two successful stage recoveries, and the first real payload the vehicle has ever carried to space. Booster 20 and Ship 40 lifted off at 5:51 p.m. CT from Starbase, and by the time the mission wrapped roughly an hour later, both halves of the rocket had done exactly what they were supposed to do.
Booster 20 separated from Ship 40 a few minutes into the flight and stuck a controlled splashdown in the Gulf of Mexico about six minutes after liftoff. That is a meaningful turnaround from Flight 12 in May, when the booster lost several engines during its boostback burn before a hard water landing attempt.
Starship as seen from Starlink satellites pic.twitter.com/e2hvfmnewh
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) July 25, 2026
Starship 40’s performance was arguably the bigger win. The vehicle deployed the first 20 operational Starlink V3 satellites Starship has ever carried, then flew a suborbital arc to a landing in the Indian Ocean that SpaceX commentator Dan Huot called the company’s softest splashdown yet. “This is a dream scenario for this team that’s trying to get this heat shield data,” Huot said on the live broadcast, according to Space.com’s live coverage. “I’m a little over the moon right now. Wow. Lucky number 13.”
Unlike the mass simulators SpaceX flew on Flight 12, these were production Starlink V3 satellites, meant to extend solar arrays and antennas and attempt to link with the broader constellation before reentering minutes later. Getting real hardware through a full deploy sequence on only the second flight of the V3 generation keeps Starship on schedule for the payload work NASA is counting on for future Artemis lunar landings.
What an awesome launch, really seems like everything went super well and it was all incredibly smooth.
SpaceX is awesome. Very interested to see how the market will respond on Monday pic.twitter.com/KSHmyBfV55
— TESLARATI (@Teslarati) July 25, 2026
— TESLARATI (@Teslarati) July 25, 2026
The flight also arrives at a moment when SpaceX needed a win. SPCX has traded below its $135 IPO price since mid-July, as Teslarati reported when the mission slipped to Friday, and short interest has climbed to roughly a third of the tradable float. A clean flight will not fix a balance sheet, but it does answer the one question SpaceX absolutely needed answered this week: whether the fixes made after the July 16 abort would hold up under real flight conditions. They did, on both stages, on the first try after the redesign.
SpaceX has not set a target date for Flight 14, though the company has said it wants to push toward an orbital attempt on the next mission. After Friday, that goal looks a lot more within reach.
Tesla short sellers won big following the company’s massive fall on Wall Street after it reported subpar Earnings on Wednesday.
Tesla short sellers collected about $4.12 billion in single-day profits on Thursday, according to Bloomberg. Shares fell as much as 15 percent during Thursday’s session. It closed as one of the worst days for Tesla on Wall Street in the past three years.
Investors sold off the stock after Tesla said it would aggressively direct its spending toward AI and its Optimus robot project. The company had record revenues, which were driven by one of the strongest quarters in terms of vehicle deliveries in company history.
However, it missed EPS estimates by reporting just $0.33, a far cry from the $0.53 analysts expected.
S3 Partners reported that about 3 percent of Tesla’s outstanding stock is sold short. Managing Director at S3, Ihor Dusaniwsky, provided the short seller’s potential profit, as well as another figure: shorts have likely had paper gains of $8.92 billion this year, as Tesla shares are down 30 percent in 2026.
Tesla (TSLA) Q2 2026 earnings results: miss on EPS, beat on revenue
Tesla has burned short sellers many times in the past, but the company’s latest Earnings Call was a chance for those skeptics to taste some payback. Although the company gave some very transparent information regarding future projects, the rollout of Robotaxi, Optimus, and Semi, many investors took their profits on Thursday.
Notable short sellers like Michael Burry have been transparent about their skepticism around Tesla shares. Burry just revealed three weeks ago that he had opened up a new short on the stock, stating he shorted Tesla shares at $416.22. “Happy it jumped back to this level,” he said in a blog post.
At the time of publication, Tesla shares were down about 3 percent and the stock was trading at $309.92.
Tesla stock (NASDAQ: TSLA) endured one of its sharpest single-day declines in years on July 23, tumbling approximately 14.5 percent and closing near $320 after opening the session around $374. The drop erased more than $140 billion in market value amid heavy trading volume and left the shares at multi-week lows.
The sell-off followed the company’s second-quarter 2026 results, released the previous evening. Tesla reported record revenue of $28.2 billion, up 26 percent year over year, driven by a Q2-record 480,126 vehicle deliveries. Energy storage deployments also rose strongly.
Tesla (TSLA) Q2 2026 earnings results: miss on EPS, beat on revenue
Yet profitability disappointed sharply. Operating income fell 57 percent to $398 million, compressing the operating margin to just 1.4 percent. Non-GAAP earnings per share came in at $0.33, well below the roughly $0.53 analysts had expected. Free cash flow turned negative by $1.1 billion as capital expenditures surged 142 percent to $5.8 billion, largely tied to accelerated spending on artificial intelligence, robotics, and autonomous systems.
The losses on capex were expected, as Tesla said it would be spending heavily in 2026.
Investors also reacted to lingering uncertainty surrounding key product timelines. During the Earnings Call, management reiterated ambitions for Robotaxi deployment and the Optimus humanoid robot, but offered limited new concrete milestones, renewing questions about execution pace that have long accompanied Tesla’s ambitious roadmap.
The magnitude of the decline places it among Tesla’s more severe one-day percentage losses since its 2010 initial public offering. Historically, the two largest single-day drops (split-adjusted) remain September 8, 2020, when shares fell 21.1 percent amid broader market volatility and valuation concerns, and January 13, 2012, with a 19.3 percent plunge during the company’s early growth struggles.
Other notable declines include an 18.6 percent drop on March 16, 2020, at the onset of pandemic-related market turmoil. Thursday’s move ranks roughly ninth on the all-time list but stands out as the steepest in more than a year.
Despite the short-term pain, Tesla’s long-term trajectory has repeatedly recovered from such volatility. The latest results underscore both the strength of its core automotive and energy businesses and the near-term costs of heavy investment in next-generation technologies.
SpaceX Starship just nailed something it’s never done before
Tesla’s Supercharger Diner probably just secured more locations
