Elon Musk, chief executive officer of Tesla Inc., from left, Howard Lutnick, US commerce secretary, walk on the South Lawn of the White House before boarding Marine One in Washington, DC, US, on Friday, March 14, 2025.
Al Drago | Bloomberg | Getty Images
Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick urged the public to “buy Tesla” stock, a highly unusual promotion by a Cabinet member of a company whose current investors have suffered a sharp slide in share price since December.
Lutnick’s touting of Tesla shares Wednesday night came as CEO Elon Musk oversees the highly controversial DOGE effort to slash the federal workforce for the Trump administration. The company is also facing a spate of vandalism of Tesla locations and vehicles around the United States.
Government conflict of interest rules prohibit federal employees from using their “government position or title or any authority associated with his public office to endorse any product, service or enterprise” save for very limited situations, none of which appeared to apply to Lutnick.
“If you want to learn something on this show tonight, buy Tesla,” Lutnick said during an interview on Fox News with Jesse Watters.
“It’s unbelievable,” Lutnick said, drawing out the last word, “that this guy’s stock is so cheap.”
“It’ll never be this cheap again,” Lutnick continued, next to a split screen of video showing flames from Teslas in Las Vegas that were set on fire by Molotov cocktails earlier in the week.
Tesla has shed hundreds of billions of dollars in market capitalization since its stock’s sharp slide began in December, a month after President Donald Trump was elected.
Burned Teslas are shown at a Tesla Collision Center after an individual used incendiary devices to set several vehicles on fire on March 18, 2025 in Las Vegas, Nevada.
Ethan Miller | Getty Images
“When people understand the things he’s building, the robots he’s building, the technology he’s building, people are going to be dreaming of today, and Jesse Watters will [be] thinking ‘gosh, I should have bought Elon Musk’s stock.”
Lutnick went on, “I mean, who wouldn’t invest in Elon Musk? You gotta be kidding.”
Before he was picked by Trump to lead the Commerce Department, Lutnick had a long career on Wall Street leading the financial services firm Cantor Fitzgerald.
A spokesperson for Tesla did not immediately reply to a request for comment from CNBC.
Musk and Tesla have become targets of animus by critics of the Trump administration because of Musk’s role leading DOGE, which stands for Department of Government Efficiency.
Trump recently turned the White House lawn into a temporary Tesla showroom, so that Musk could display five vehicles for the press and the president, who said he planned to buy one.
Presidents and vice presidents are exempt from federal conflict of interest rules.
At the event, Trump revealed that he had purchased a Tesla Cybertruck for his granddaughter, Kai Trump.
On Thursday, Tesla issued a recall of nearly all of its Cybertrucks in the United States, to repair an exterior panel at risk of detaching when the vehicle is being driven.
Demonstrators gather for a protest against Elon Musk and electric car maker Tesla on February 22, 2025 in Seattle, Washington.
David Ryder | Getty Images
During Trump’s first term in office, his then-White House senior advisor Kellyanne Conway was criticized for a Fox News appearance in which she urged viewers to “go buy” products made by a brand owned by Ivanka Trump, the president’s daughter.
“Go buy Ivanka’s stuff, is what I would tell you. I’m going to. I hate shopping and I’m going to go get some myself today,” Conway told “Fox and Friends” in February 2017.
“I’m going to give it a free commercial here,” Conway said.
The U.S. Office of Government Ethics later warned the White House that it had “strong reason” to believe that Conway violated ethics rules with her comments.
In response, the White House ethics office wrote that it had looked into the matter and “concluded that Ms. Conway acted inadvertently and is highly unlikely to do so again.”
This is developing news. Check back for updates.
