NEW YORK, NEW YORK – FEBRUARY 14: New York Attorney General Letitia James speaks during a Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) press conference in Manhattan Federal Court on February 14, 2025 in New York City. James was joined by Connecticut Attorney General William Tong for a press conference ahead of a scheduled hearing as they discussed their ongoing lawsuit with 17 other state attorneys general to block Elon Musk’s DOGE from accessing personal data held at the Treasury Department. (Photo by Michael M. Santiago/Getty Images)
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Why is Elon Musk so rich? Clown question, right? He started amazing companies.
It all sounds so simple, except the explanation fails to account for Musk’s individual wealth. A much bigger factor is that with SpaceX and Tesla, both were expected to fail.
As of CNBC James Cramer said in 2010 when Tesla went public, “Tesla is sell, sell, sell.” Except that if investors had bought, bought, bought 1,000 shares of Tesla that day, they would have $5.8 million today.
What you’ve just read is neither a dig at Cramer, nor the investors who passed on Tesla. Cramer and investors in general were very right about SpaceX and Tesla. Both nearly died more than once due to lack of investor interest in keeping them alive.
Of course, that’s why Elon Musk is so rich today. When more capital was needed, interest from capital sources was cruelly thin, so Musk was able to sell fewer shares in each of those he wanted.
Musk is the richest man in the world not because he started two amazing companies, but because he started two companies that investors weren’t surprised about. They couldn’t see the future that Musk saw. In business, the future is the image definition of opaque.
Which brings us to the Trump administration and its stance on antitrust. He is gradually using it less, and that is wise. Look at Musk one more time. Antitrust implies a vision of the business future within government that doesn’t even exist among the world’s biggest investors.
Follow the 2025 Administration’s effort to block HPE’s acquisition of Jupiter Networks. If we ignore that the combination didn’t even make it dominant in the US wireless business networking market (Cisco could claim 50 percent market share at the time of DOJ enforcement), and if we ignore that the combination would also face strong competition globally from Huawei, we can’t ignore the antitrust conceit.
Antitrust law assumes that the future will mostly resemble the present. Except that, particularly in the US, it never does. See SpaceX and Tesla again.
In a sense the Trump administration has. It eventually gets out of hand so that HPE can buy Juniper Networks. everything ok Unfortunately, no, and that’s not solely because the Trump administration hasn’t rolled back all of its antitrust provisions.
Rather, it’s because state attorneys general, seemingly eager to keep the spirit of Joe Biden-era antitrust alive, are beginning to challenge combinations (including HPE/Juniper) that federal regulators have already reviewed and settled. Even though Biden dropped out of the 2024 presidential race, and even though his Democratic Party lost in 2024 as Donald Trump beat Kamala Harris, state governors like Rob Bonda (Calif.) and Letitia James (N.E.) are acting as if Harris won, and worse, as if he remains her lieutenant general. Lina Kahn (FTC Chair under Biden).
Which is unfortunate. It is not just that antitrust enforcement deprives businesses of the ability to discover a future that is once again opaque, it is that the restraint implied in antitrust law makes businesses sitting ducks, unable to prepare for a future that elected and appointed officials could not possibly divine.
As Barack Obama once observed, elections have consequences. That of 2024 was a rejection of a wide variety of policies, including the suffocation of companies with antitrust agreements. State AGs should heed the 2024 message and back away from antitrust actions that pretend Biden is still in the White House.
