Most of the South African tycoon’s remarks and deeds have a habit of shaking the sphere in which they are directed.
Whether it’s the financial market or the automobile industry, none appears to be immune to the wise counsel of one of the world’s wealthiest men.
The wizard of messages
Elon Musk is a specialist in the handling of words, the timing of his delivery and the channels he uses to convey a message.
Therefore, when the owner of Tesla takes on the task of stating his position on a given topic, generally one of his financial projects will end up benefiting, regardless of the tone he uses.
During an interview with the Financial Times, the billionaire businessman left Americans in a bad mood when he compared their work performance with that of the Chinese, whom he held up as an example to follow.
“There are just a lot of super-talented hard-working people in China who believe strongly in manufacturing. They won’t just burn the midnight oil, they’ll burn the 3 a.m. oil. They won’t even leave the factory, whereas in the U.S. people are trying to avoid going to work,” he said.
In defense of their interests
The real reason behind Musk’s comments perhaps has to do with the serious problem facing the production of his Tesla models in China, home to one of his mega-factories, which, despite the support of Asian workers, has not been able to catch up with the production of electric vehicles since the pandemic began.
From this perspective, praising the Chinese to the detriment of U.S. workers is aimed at boosting the pride of both in order to increase their productivity even more, since it should not be forgotten that Tesla units are also assembled in the U.S., but on a smaller scale.
Fearful of the automotive crisis
Since the automotive parts supply chain was affected by the Covid-19 pandemic, the automotive industry fell into a crisis from which it has not yet managed to emerge, not counting electric vehicles, the source of Elon Musk’s wealth.
The tycoon gained further notoriety when it became known that during the production phase of Tesla’s Model 3, he even slept on the floor of Tesla’s Fremont factory.
“I wanted my circumstances to be worse than anyone else in the company. As long as they felt pain, I wanted mine to be worse,” he told Bloomberg in 2018.
The truth is that his “sacrifice” ended up incentivizing his workers and this translated into millions in profits for the South African.
In this sense, praising the Chinese and pique the growth of his U.S. workers, in the end will give him the same result, more money in his bank accounts.