Elon, Inc.

In the second episode of Bloomberg BusinessWeek’s new podcast Everybody’s Business, Max Chafkin and Stacey Vanek Smith talk market turmoil. The stock market has been on a wild ride ever since the Trump Administration put sweeping tariffs in place, but it was trouble in the bond market that seemed to get the President’s attention and inspire the White House to hit pause on the tariffs. Tracy Alloway of the Odd Lots podcast joins to help explain.

And what does a big, global company like Apple do in a protectionist world? Mark Gurman, Bloomberg’s Chief Correspondent covering consumer technology, explains why the tariff announcement has hit Apple’s stock especially hard and how much you can expect the price of your iPhone to rise.

Finally, have scientists unearthed an ancient howl? Stacey is blown away while Max is (unsurprisingly) skeptical.

When Donald Trump unveiled that big list of countries and their respective tariffs, the markets reacted immediately by nosediving. In the days since, business leaders, tech founders and global CEOs have been making noise about how their companies will be negatively impacted. And even though Elon Musk is now part of the Trump administration, he’s also jumped into the fray, feuding with Trump adjutant Peter Navarro on (where else?) X. This is the biggest split between Trump and Musk we’ve seen yet. To talk about these developments, Elon, Inc. regulars Dana Hull and Max Chafkin are joined by Bloomberg editor Craig Trudell and political correspondent Nancy Cook. 

In the first episode of Bloomberg Businessweek’s new podcast Everybody’s Business, Max Chafkin and Stacey Vanek Smith try to make sense of “Liberation Day”—Donald Trump’s recent introduction of steep tariffs on imports from seemingly every corner of the globe. Will these taxes "fix" the economy like a hammer helps a headache? Or are they a tool to change an unsustainable system of global trade?

Then Businessweek editor Brad Stone joins to discuss reported recent attempts of Amazon’s Jeff Bezos and Oracle’s Larry Ellison to acquire TikTok. After a dramatic near-decade of politicians trying to cancel the app in the US, will an unlikely cabal of investors manage to save America’s new favorite pastime?

Also, Max shares what story he thinks deserved more attentions this week. It’s all about bats.

Everybody’s Business is a Businessweek production. It will live in the Elon, Inc. feed for a few weeks until it gets its own home starting May 16th.

On Friday night, news broke that Elon Musk was merging his company X with his company xAI—a move that this very podcast, Elon, Inc., had predicted last year. This week, a campaign for the Wisconsin Supreme Court looms very large, as Musk is again spending millions of dollars to (Democrats contend) try and tilt an election in the Republican Party’s favor. Today, we talk about what the Friday night news means for Musk’s financial world and what the Wisconsin race means for his political future. This episode features social media reporter Kurt Wager, Elon Musk reporter Dana Hull, Bloomberg Businessweek senior writer Max Chafkin and host David Papadopoulos.

Elon Musk’s leverage over the Republican Party, made plain by his threats to finance primary challenges against anyone who fails to fully support Donald Trump, comes from his multibillion-dollar bank account. Recently, he’s decided to spend some of that money on behalf of the party. In Wisconsin, Musk has spent upwards of $13 million to sway a state supreme court race that has ramifications for Republican control of the US House of Representatives. To discuss this, host David Papadopoulos is joined by Elon Musk reporter Dana Hull, Bloomberg Businessweek senior writer Max Chafkin and politics reporter Ted Mann. Then, later in the episode, Bloomberg Intelligence analyst Steve Man joins to talk about his optimistic view on Tesla sales.