www.newsweek.com - Biden Doesn't Want Cheap EVs From China. What Does That Say About U.S. Climate Policy? - 2024-04-10
|------- "When I think about climate change, I think jobs." Climate policy, in [Biden's] view, is an opportunity to unlock more union-friendly, high-paying manufacturing jobs in climate tech like EVs and batteries. It's also a way to shore up political support in manufacturing-dependent states, such as Michigan. -------|

Where are UAW and Shawn Fain now? Players change, but the "game" stays the same:

michiganadvance.com - UAW's embrace of Trump tariffs could lead to disaster for its members - 2025-03-20
|------- "There's been a lot of talk of these tariffs "disrupting" the economy. But if corporate America chooses to price-gouge the American consumer or attack the American worker because they don't want to pay their fair share... The UAW is in active negotiations with the Trump Administration about their plans to end the free trade disaster. We look forward to working with the White House to shape the auto tariffs in April to benefit the working class. ... -------|

Meanwhile, record numbers of "working class" are defaulting on their auto loans:

www.bloomberg.com - Americans default on car loans at record rates - 2025-03-06

Elon may do just fine, especially after taking over government's resources:

www.washingtonpost.com - Elon Musk's business empire is built on $38 billion in government funding
|------- An additional 52 ongoing contracts with seven government agencies - including NASA, the Defense Department and the General Services Administration - are on track to potentially pay Musk's companies an additional $11.8 billion over the next few years...

Without the credits, Tesla would have lost more than $700 million in 2020, marking a seventh-consecutive year with no profits. With the credits, the company reported a $862 million profit. ... -------|
__________

Not really, sell-side analysts may do so, but not real (buy-side) analysts and investors.
www.investopedia.com

First, [trailing] earnings (E in P/E) could be and have been easily manipulated.

Second, reducing valuations to single flawed ratio which does not give a full picture of company's internals and future prospects and, therefore, stock value is a bad investing practice. That's why you may see a stock falling after earnings call when the "company beat the [projected] earnings" as the internals or guidance don't meet expectations.

Third, "forward" earnings is a conjecture, an average of projected company earnings for next fiscal year by sell-side analysts (whose job usually is to "not piss off the company's CEO and CFO" to keep company management interested in their firms' investment services, like loans, market making or underwriting new stock issuance, etc.) so is mostly an unreliable and very variable number, depending on data sources used and analysts' changing earning projections (and PTs) often during fiscal year.

.

#102 | Posted by LampLighter at 2025-03-21 08:59 PM
What does that mean?
Roughly speaking, the forward P/E of Tesla is about 10 times more than that of Toyota. So, investors seem to expect Tesla to grow ten times more quickly than Toyota going forward.
But, there's an interesting aspect in the numbers ...
The trailing P/E vs forward P/E for Toyota shows an increase, indicating that investors expect Toyota to increase its rate of growth in the future.
While, for Tesla, the trailing P/E vs forward P/E for [Tesla] shows an decrease, indicating that investors expect Tesla to slow its rate of growth in the future.

Apologies for the deep dive here ....

It's... wrong, upside down and the other way around.

First, rate of earning growth is a different and separate ratio - PEG (Price to Earnings Growth = P/EG ), not direct comparison between P/Es of companies, especially in different industries; e.g., tech sector stocks usually have higher PEG than car industry stocks. PEG of 1.0 means P/E reflects actual [trailing] earnings growth. Lower PEG usually indicates either a more attractive price or faster growth, higher PEG means overvalued relative to current or potential earnings growth.

TSLA was pushed as "high tech, high growth" stock, not as a car company.

Second, lower / decreased "forward" P/E means average projected Earnings are higher than "trailing" TTM (Trailing Twelve Months) Earnings relative to current Price.
Vice versa, higher / increased "forward" P/E means future Earnings projected to be lower than current / "trailing" relative to current Price.

TM --- P/E = 7.56 ..... FP/E = 8.70 ..... PEG = 0.35 / 1.54 (5-yr)
TSLA - P/E = 122.56 ... FP/E = 65.94 ... PEG = 4.61 / 3.02 (5-yr)

Anyway, "forward" P/E is basically a fantasy, TTM P/E is too flawed and superficial, to make any sort of investment decisions or comparisons based on them.
__________