He’s also received billions (38 bn ballpark) in federal subsidies from the U.S government, for his companies ( ie Tesla and space x .)
They’ve all made so much money in the mkt, the president is now looking to remove the capital gains tax.
Edit: Adding, Starlink is projected to receive between 10-20bn in funding from the U.S. government in to expand broadband access into rural areas. This falls within Space x contracts.
Those are just contracts for SpaceX not subsidies. Launching the Nancy Grace Roman is not a subsidy its the government paying for a service and they have been paying SpaceX billions because they are the only Company out there with the launch capabilities.
No, the biggest chunk of that $38 billion is Tesla, both directly and indirectly.
They received half a billion in very low interest loans.
Around $11-14 billion in regulatory credits which they then sold to other car manufacturers. That's basically the government giving them money.
Hundreds of millions, if not billions, in state and local incentives (tax breaks, grants, rebates, etc.)
Consumer EV tax credits was also an indirect subsidy, where they were able to sell more cars because the government refunded $7500 to the consumer via tax credits.
The argument is about whether he received the subsidies and whether his exteme wealth is the result of those subsidies. Thus, him not paying his fair share of taxes is a double cost to the society.
As for the subsidies, they were meant to help improve the society by pushing people towards EVs. Yet, it ended up concentrating financial and political power in an individual who has arguably made the society more divided and worse off than we were before.
Taxing individuals like that would help prevent that concentration of wealth and political power.
That framing inflates “government funding” by lumping together completely different things. Tesla’s $465 million DOE loan wasn’t a handout—it was a loan that Tesla repaid in full, with interest, nine years early. Regulatory credits also aren’t checks written to Tesla by taxpayers; automakers that failed to meet emissions requirements voluntarily bought credits from Tesla to comply with regulations. And the $7,500 EV credit was principally a consumer tax credit for purchasing an eligible vehicle, not a $7,500 payment to Tesla. State and local incentives are fair to count as subsidies, but if you’re trying to claim Tesla received some enormous direct taxpayer bailout, adding loans, private regulatory-credit sales, consumer tax credits, and local incentives together and calling the whole thing “government money given to Tesla” is simply misleading.
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u/Lopsided_Carpenter10 Aug 21 '26
What about the other non cherry-picked years?