Welcome to today's edition of the Daily 5.
For the auto industry, it's not really a question of how much Tesla CEO Elon Musk is influencing President-elect Donald Trump. It's how much that influence is going to benefit Musk and Tesla Inc. Wall Street is betting it'll be a lot.
Shares in Tesla already have surged 28 percent since Trump won his second nonconsecutive term in the White House. Early last week, we learned Musk would co-lead Trump's Department of Government Efficiency, or DOGE. Then we heard the Trump transition team wants to kill EV tax credits with Musk's blessing.
And early today, a Bloomberg report emerged that said the Trump team wants to ease regulations on the development of self-driving vehicles. These changes would almost certainly help Tesla move ahead in R&D for such vehicles, so shares rose 5.6 percent to close today at $338.74.
To illustrate how much this rally benefits Musk, do this math: He owns or controls more than 411 million Tesla shares. Musk can literally gain or lose billions of dollars on paper each day. At last look, Bloomberg pegged his net worth at $313 billion.
For the sake of comparison with the Detroit 3, General Motors' entire market capitalization is about $62 billion at its current stock price. Ford is worth about $45 billion and Stellantis about $39 billion.
In other news today, we've got the latest East Coast expansion moves by Tasca Automotive Group, which acquired five stores in New York, Massachusetts and New Jersey in four transactions this year. As part of these acquisitions, Tasca bought its first Toyota franchised dealership. Co-owner Bob Tasca Jr. signaled more is coming from the 82-year-old dealership group.
"We think the overall direction of the industry is positive," Tasca told our Julie Walker in today's story. "And we think that '25 will be another good year to be a car dealer."
If you're following the ongoing deterioration of business in China for Western automakers, take a look at this troubling story about how the Europeans are subsidizing their dealership networks just to keep the doors open. For BMW, it's costing hundreds of billions of euros, as Nick Gibbs reports for Automotive News Europe. Overall, the premium market in China fell 8.5 percent to 1.9 million vehicles in the first nine months, according to figures from the China Passenger Car Association in our report.
On another topic, we routinely publish stories about troubles in the automotive supply chain, but we have a story today from our Crain affiliate in Grand Rapids, Mich., about how GNS — a supplier for GM, Tesla and others — has survived all of the industry tumult over the last five years. Hint: Solid management succession planning might have something to do with it.
Looking ahead, we'll have plenty more in the coming days on the Trump transition's impact on the auto industry. You can also expect plenty of product news coming this week from the Los Angeles Auto Show.
That's it for now. Have a great rest of your day.
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— Philip Nussel, online editor
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