Musk Says Trump Preventing Him From Building Legion of Robots

It turns out Donald Trump's tariffs have been good for something: pouring cold water on another one of Elon Musk's harebrained schemes.

Remember those creepy humanoid robots Tesla showed off last year — the ones that turned out to remote-controlled by humans? As it turns out, the long-promised androids rely on magnets made from heavy rare-earth metals that are currently supplied exclusively by China.

Unfortunately for Tesla, Donald Trump's baffling trade war seems to have successfully goaded China into suspending rare earth exports to the US, putting high-tech production in a tight bind. Especially affected, according to Musk, is the production of the tiny servos in Optimus' human-like hands.

On a quarterly earnings call with Tesla investors yesterday, Musk was quick to point fingers at US-China trade relations under Trump for stalling efforts on Optimus production.

"That’s more affected by the supply chain, by basically China requiring an export license to send out anywhere with magnets, so we’re working through that with China," the tech tycoon said.

Musk has previously promised investors the company would roll out 5,000 autonomous bots in 2025, but noted it had the capacity to make as many as 12,000.

"But even 5,000 robots, that's the size of a Roman legion, FYI," he said on the matter. He likewise claimed that Tesla was already working on a second generation of Optimus that he says it will produce at a rate of 100,000 units per month starting in 2026.

Trump's trade volley is a convenient excuse for Musk, who needs all the help he can get as his ambitious schemes collapse like a house of cards. In the same earnings call, Tesla reported a 71 percent drop in profit compared to the same time last year — a record plunge for the company.

"This is the worst performance I’ve seen in Tesla’s history," said Ross Gerber, CEO of Gerber Kawasaki, an investment firm with a significant stake in Tesla. "I get Elon will tell everyone about trillions of [Technology Acceptance Model] TAM and robots taking over the world… anything to get you not to look at the facts."

Gerber's comments cut to the heart of the issue. Thanks to Musk's continuous promises, Optimus is expected to deliver big — but there's little concrete evidence that the bots are ready, and the clock is ticking.

At the moment, meaningful details on Optimus are close to nonexistent. As of early April of this year, we know they can walk a straight line in a controlled environment — a feat robots have been pulling off since the WABOT-1 debuted in 1972. They can also pick up eggs, showcasing a similar ability Google's robotics arms have been endowed with since at least 2016.

Other than that, well, we don't have much. There's still no evidence that the "general-purpose robot assistant" can accomplish any economically significantly tasks outside a controlled lab setting, and there are supposed to be thousands of these things delivered this year.

Zooming out, it's becoming clear Trump's trade war is the least of Tesla's production woes. The sputtering company now has to contend with the lasting damage Musk's ego has done to the brand in the global market — as if his consistently hollow promises weren't challenging enough.

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