Donald Trump

For weeks, we’ve been hearing that plummeting oil prices and dirt-cheap gasoline will kill electric vehicles. Now it appears the oil industry is the one whose future is in question. So, of course, President Trump is plotting a big bailout for Big Oil.

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An 83-minute-long video of a dinner attended by Donald Trump in April 2018 was released today by Lev Parnas.

The video touches on many subjects, many of which been covered elsewhere. But here on Electrek, we are particularly interested in the part starting around minute 57, where there is approximately 15 minutes’ worth of discussion about electric vehicles, alternative fuels, shipping, and autonomous driving.

And almost all of it is nonsense.

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You can’t expect a lot from someone who thinks coal is the future, but Donald Trump is pushing his lack of vision a step further by now going after electric vehicles.

Trump says that automakers who go all-electric will fail and calls GM CEO Mary Barra’s latest restructuring ‘nasty’.

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Tesla CEO Elon Musk raised the issue of US-China automotive import and export with President Donald Trump today in a series of tweets embedded below.

The conversation is especially interesting amidst Tesla eyeing its own factory in China.

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Mr. Trump has announced that he will pull the US out of the Paris Climate Agreement, ceasing all implementation as of today. Despite the vast majority of Americans support remaining in the Agreement by a 5:1 margin, and even a 2:1 margin among Republicans, Mr. Trump claimed that the decision to pull out was borne of a desire to follow the will of the people.

The US will consider re-entering the Agreement after “negotiating a new deal” which is more “fair” to the US.  It is unclear what is “unfair” about the Paris Agreement, as the Agreement itself does not set any specific goals for the US or any other country.  Click below the fold for more details of the Agreement and analysis of this decision.

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President Donald Trump has been talking about pulling the U.S. out of the Paris climate change agreement since the election, but he had yet to formally confirm or initiate the move.

Today, rumors came out that he made the decision of pulling out and that it is now only about how they plan to do so.

Tesla CEO Elon Musk, who is on the President’s Strategic and Policy Forum and manufacturing council, has been advising the President to stay committed to the Paris agreement and he now threatens to quit the councils if the rumors are true.

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image via NYTimes

Yesterday, 97 companies, largely tech industry leaders such as Apple, Google and Intel, filed an amicus brief in the federal court case led by Minnesota and Washington states against the recent executive order banning certain refugees and immigrants from entry into the United States.  Tesla was a notable absence from the list of companies, but today news came that another ~30 companies are joining the amicus brief, including both of Elon Musk’s companies Tesla and SpaceX.

Tesla’s absence from the original list was notable due to Elon Musk’s position on the Presidential Advisory Forum and his recent comments on twitter regarding the immigration order, the Advisory Forum, and the US justice system.

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Tesla CEO Elon Musk was already on President Trump’s Strategic and Policy Forum, but the White House announced today that he will also be joining the administration’s new manufacturing council, a private sector group that advises the U.S. secretary of commerce.

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On his first full day as President of the United States of America, Donald Trump is again meeting with top American executives – something he did during the transition – in order to discuss manufacturing.

Tesla CEO Elon Musk, who has met Trump and several of his top advisors on multiple occasions during the transition, is at the White House today for the meeting in another rapprochement with the administration.

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Tesla CEO Elon Musk got closer to President-elect Donald Trump since the election, a move that was welcomed by people concerned about climate change considering Musk’s mission to address the issue and Trump being dismissive of even the existence of the problem.

Musk has since joined Trump’s Strategic and Policy Forum and he attended a meeting with the President-elect last month alongside several other tech executives – pictured above.

During an event with investors at the Gigafactory in Nevada this week, Musk described his takeaway from the meeting and it looks somewhat encouraging for the clean tech industry.

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Tesla and SpaceX CEO Elon Musk was among 15 tech executives taking part in President-elect Donald Trump’s meeting with Silicon Valley’s top brass. His presence stood out when you consider that Trump opened the meeting by saying:

“I won’t tell you the hundreds of calls we had asking to come to this meeting. Peter [Thiel] was sort of saying “no, that company is too small,” and these are monster companies…”

Musk’s companies are dwarfed by the sizes of the other companies at the table, which makes his presence more interesting – especially in light of his nomination to Trump’s Strategic and Policy Team.

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US President-elect Donald Trump has invited Silicon Valley’s top brass to the Trump Tower in New York today for a special tech summit which is taking place right now – jobs and regulations are expected to be on the agenda. The meeting will be crowded with over a dozen tech executives, but apparently two of them will get a separate private meeting with the next President of the US: Tesla & SpaceX CEO Elon Musk and Apple CEO Tim Cook.

The news comes just as it was announced by Trump’s transition team that Musk will be on the President’s Strategic and Policy Team, a group of high-profile businessmen that “will be called upon to meet with the President frequently to share their specific experience and knowledge as the President implements his economic agenda.”

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It was revealed last week that President-elect Donald Trump will be meeting with important tech-industry executives, including Apple CEO Tim Cook, Alphabet CEO Larry Page, Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella, and Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg, among others, at Trump Tower on December 14.

Tesla and SpaceX CEO Elon Musk wasn’t listed among the attendees when the meeting came to light last week, but Musk recently said that he would be “happy” to meet the new President-elect in an interview with the New York Time and now he is reportedly going to be present at the meeting.

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The 2016 US Presidential election is close – plenty of politics are swirling related to the solar power and renewable energy industries. Each of the candidates running for President have spoken specifically on solar power, with Clinton and Sanders expressly supporting significant growth. Sungevity has put together a fun tool that lets you tweet directly to your candidate the system size that Sungevity thinks would best fit on their residence. Raising awareness – one tweet at a time!

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As far as presidential candidates are concerned, it’s hard to find one with scarier implications for the planet than Donald Trump. As Politico points out, the presumptive Republican Presidential Candidate has called global warming “a total hoax,” “BS” and “pseudoscience.”

But that’s just the candidate trying to win the Republican endorsement for president. As a businessman with properties on the coasts, Trump takes a decidedly different tack…

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Update: Elon Musk said in a tweet today that the American Enterprise Institute meeting was not secretive and that he was not there to talk about Trump.

According to a report from the Huffington Post, Elon Musk was among a handful of tech CEOs and Republican establishment members who recently met at the American Enterprise Institute’s World Forum to discuss how to best stop Donald Trump.

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