Tesla is raising the alarm over a looming shift in the U.S. auto market, warning customers to place their orders now or risk losing out on access to its electric vehicles as President Donald Trump’s newly signed tax law ends the federal EV tax credit.

The move, which removes the $7,500 electric vehicle incentive effective September 30, is already reshaping the market, with Tesla scrambling to sell its inventory and American automakers bracing for a turbulent second half of the year.

“Given the abrupt change, we have limited supply of vehicles in the US this quarter,” said Tesla CFO Vaibhav Taneja on the company’s earnings call. “If you are in the US and looking to buy a car, place your order now as we may not be able to guarantee delivery orders placed in the later part of August and beyond.”

The warning follows the passage of legislation extending Trump’s 2017 tax cuts while removing critical green energy subsidies—a development industry analysts say could tilt the balance of power in favor of smaller EV startups like Lucid and Rivian, who are less dependent on the tax credit.

In response, Tesla has rolled out a series of time-limited incentives, including free Supercharging, a Full Self-Driving trial, and a $1,000 discount for military personnel, teachers, and first responders, as it pushes to move vehicles before the September deadline.

Tariffs Add to Tesla’s Troubles as “Weird Transition Period” Unfolds

Tesla’s top executives also pointed to the Trump administration’s tariff policies as a mounting challenge, with the company incurring $300 million in additional costs this quarter due to trade-related duties.

“We are in an unpredictable environment on the tariff front,” Taneja said.

CEO Elon Musk described the present moment as a “weird transition period” as Tesla tries to navigate not only the expiration of tax incentives but also regulatory ambiguity surrounding autonomous driving technologies.

U.S. Automakers Face Disadvantage as Foreign Brands Gain Ground

Tesla’s concerns reflect a broader anxiety across American manufacturers, who say the combined impact of tariff hikes and policy rollbacks is placing U.S. automakers at a structural disadvantage.

Spencer Hakimian, founder of Tolou Capital Management, echoed those concerns in a note reacting to a recent 15% tariff on foreign autos, which investors see as giving Japanese carmakers an edge.

“Toyota is up +8% on the news of a 15% tariff. Why? It’s simple,” Hakimian explained. “Ford, GM, Tesla, and all the other American manufacturers are going to be paying 50% more for their steel, 50% more for their copper, 25% more for their Canadian production, 25% more for their Mexican production, and 55% on their Chinese production. Toyota only has to pay 15% more and they’re done with all the shenanigans. Ford has to pay much more than that. A lot more in fact. We’ve given a Japanese car company an advantage over American car companies. All in hope of bringing auto jobs back to America.”

Industry analysts say the combination of tariff hikes and subsidy removals may backfire, with American firms bearing disproportionate costs while foreign competitors, like Toyota and Hyundai, sidestep the worst of the trade penalties.

Weak Earnings Underscore Market Shift

Tesla’s Q2 2025 earnings report reflected the deepening pressure. The company posted $22.5 billion in revenue, its sharpest quarterly decline in 10 years, falling short of Wall Street expectations. Earnings per share landed at 40 cents, versus a projected 42 cents. The company delivered 384,000 vehicles in the quarter ending June, a modest achievement in an increasingly volatile market.

Tesla’s stock fell over 4% in after-hours trading, contributing to a 17.6% year-to-date decline.

As the countdown to the tax credit sunset continues, Tesla’s message to Americans is that the window is closing fast. With tax incentives vanishing and tariff costs escalating, the affordability and accessibility of Tesla’s EVs—once seen as central to America’s energy transition—are now under threat.

And Tesla isn’t the only one sounding the alarm. Across the industry, U.S. automakers are preparing for a future defined more by political and regulatory maneuvering than market forces, with customers caught in the crossfire.

After several delays, OpenAI says its next foundational model, GPT-5, could launch as early as next month, The Verge and Axios report. The timing is tentative, but there are indications that the release is imminent: Last week, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman teased on social media that it was coming “soon,” and testers and “red teams” are gauging its capabilities and security. GPT-5 is expected to merge traditional and reasoning models like o3, with mini and nano versions also available through its API.

OpenAI is preparing to launch its most powerful artificial intelligence model yet—GPT-5—as early as August, according to The Verge, citing sources familiar with the company’s internal timeline.

The release, if it happens as expected, will mark a critical leap in generative AI development and set the tone for the next stage of competition among global AI powerhouses.

The model has been under intense internal testing for months. Back in May, Microsoft engineers were reported to be provisioning significant server capacity in anticipation of a possible launch, prompting speculation about a release timeline that has since shifted slightly. Sources say that OpenAI has now entered the final phases of testing and refinement, with the infrastructure upgrades and technical evaluations largely in place.

OpenAI CEO Sam Altman has been steadily teasing GPT-5’s capabilities. In a recent podcast appearance with comedian Theo Von, Altman shared how the model solved a question he struggled with, prompting him to say he felt “useless relative to the AI.” He also confirmed publicly via a post on X that the model is coming soon, adding to growing anticipation across the developer and enterprise ecosystem.

One key element of the launch is the company’s planned release of mini and nano variants of GPT-5, designed to serve a range of needs from lightweight consumer applications to enterprise-grade deployments. These models will be offered via OpenAI’s API and platform, positioning the company to expand its reach across varied sectors, including software development, creative industries, customer service, finance, and education.

Unlike prior rollouts—such as GPT-4o, which introduced real-time multimodal capabilities—GPT-5 is expected to integrate a broader range of functionalities into a single, cohesive system. Altman has described the model as “a system that integrates a lot of our technology,” with internal discussions suggesting GPT-5 will combine memory, reasoning, multimodal input comprehension, and potentially real-time learning into a unified AI agent.

This bundling strategy reflects OpenAI’s intent to streamline user interaction with its tools by reducing fragmentation across different versions. The goal, according to developers close to the company, is to simplify deployment and ensure consistency in performance and behavior across devices and platforms.

The upcoming release is also seen as OpenAI’s strategic response to intensifying pressure from rivals like Google’s Gemini, Anthropic’s Claude, Meta’s Llama series, and Mistral’s open-weight models. As these companies race to dominate both foundational AI and consumer-facing interfaces, GPT-5 could determine whether OpenAI maintains its current leadership position or begins to cede ground to competitors offering faster, cheaper, or more open alternatives.

Beyond raw performance, OpenAI’s model strategy also carries significant commercial weight. Microsoft, a major investor in OpenAI, is expected to embed GPT-5 across its Azure cloud platform, Copilot products, and enterprise offerings. The integration could push further adoption of AI-powered workflows within Microsoft’s global client base, from small businesses to Fortune 500 firms.

As the launch window draws closer, developers and researchers are paying close attention to how GPT-5 will handle long-form reasoning, factual consistency, and safety guardrails—key issues that have dogged even the most advanced models. OpenAI has faced criticism over hallucinations and content control, and expectations are high that GPT-5 will demonstrate meaningful progress on these fronts.

For OpenAI, this is more than a product upgrade—it’s a litmus test for whether generative AI can transition from experimental hype to mission-critical infrastructure. GPT-4 was criticized for hallucinating, after users had expected that the model would not come with the shortfall. Even Altman said he was surprised at the model’s level of hallucination. GPT-5 is thus expected to be a better version, with many of the needed corrections.

TikTok is now racing against time as the U.S. government signals it will shut down the popular short-form video app unless its Chinese parent company, ByteDance, fully relinquishes control to American interests.

U.S. Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick on Thursday confirmed that the Trump administration is standing firm on its position.

“We’ve made the decision. You can’t have Chinese control and have something on 100 million American phones,” he said.

The demand, which includes ceding control over TikTok’s core technology, data, and algorithm, comes months after President Donald Trump signed a law mandating ByteDance to divest the U.S. arm of TikTok or face a nationwide ban. Congress passed the bill in 2024 after years of mounting concern that the Chinese government could exploit the platform to collect data from American users or manipulate the information ecosystem.

Yet despite multiple public assurances from Trump that the deal would be closed “sooner than expected,” negotiations have dragged on. The President has extended the deadline three times since taking office in January. The current and possibly final deadline is September 17.

“Basically, Americans will have control. Americans will own the technology. Americans will control the algorithm. That’s something Donald Trump is willing to do,” Lutnick said on CNBC.

China Seen as the Final Obstacle

While finding the right buyer remains a major hurdle, observers say the deal’s real bottleneck is Beijing. Even if a U.S. entity is ready to acquire TikTok’s American operations, ByteDance would still need regulatory clearance from the Chinese government — a requirement that analysts believe may be difficult, if not impossible, to obtain.

Beijing previously opposed a forced divestiture when a similar situation unfolded under Trump’s first administration in 2020, calling the move “bullying” and “political oppression of Chinese companies.” The Chinese government also revised its export control rules to limit the transfer of certain technologies — including content recommendation algorithms — widely seen as a move to complicate any TikTok sale.

This makes the current standoff more than just a commercial negotiation. It’s part of a broader geopolitical conflict over data sovereignty, surveillance, and control of the next generation of global tech platforms.

Buyers Still in Flux as Time Runs Out

Earlier this month, Reuters reported that private equity giant Blackstone pulled out of a consortium that had been preparing a bid for TikTok’s U.S. assets, dealing a major blow to the prospect of a swift resolution. Though Trump recently told Fox News that he has a group of “very wealthy people” ready to buy the platform, there’s no confirmation yet of a finalized buyer or a definitive agreement.

Meanwhile, ByteDance has not made any public statement about the current state of negotiations or whether it’s seeking Chinese approval to move forward. As the deadline approaches, legal and commercial uncertainty looms over the future of one of the world’s most influential digital platforms.

If ByteDance fails to complete the divestiture in time — or if China blocks the sale — TikTok would be effectively banned from operating in the United States. That would mean the app, which has become a staple of American digital culture, particularly among Gen Z, would disappear from app stores and lose access to U.S. infrastructure, such as cloud hosting and payments systems.

Lutnick was blunt in outlining the government’s position: “If China doesn’t approve that deal, then TikTok is going to go dark.”

With the clock ticking toward September 17, all eyes are now on Beijing and the unresolved deal that could redefine not just TikTok’s future, but the contours of global tech governance.