Tesla’s market value has swelled by about 71% this year, with almost all of those gains coming since Donald Trump’s election victory early last month. The stock’s 38% rally in November marked its best monthly performance since January 2023 and its 10th best on record. Musk poured $277 million into a pro-Trump campaign effort, according to Federal Election Commission filings, and turned his support for the Republican nominee into another full-time job ahead of the election, funding a swing-state operation to register voters and using his social media platform X to constantly tout his preferred candidate, frequently with misinformation. The world’s richest person, who’s seen his net worth swell to more than $372 billion, according to Forbes, is set to lead the Trump administration’s “Department of Government Efficiency,” alongside onetime Republican presidential candidate Vivek Ramaswamy. His new role could give Musk power over federal agencies’ budgets, staffing and the ability to push for the elimination of inconvenient regulations. Musk said during a Tesla earnings call in October that he intended to use his sway with Trump to establish a “federal approval process for autonomous vehicles.” Currently, approvals happen at the state level. “The stock is responding to the Trump bump,” Craig Irwin, an analyst at Roth MKM, told CNBC’s “Squawk on the Street” last week. Irwin had just increased his price target to $380 from $85, writing in a report that “Musk’s authentic support for Trump likely doubled Tesla’s pool of enthusiasts and lifted credibility for a demand inflection.” In its third-quarter earnings report in October, Tesla reported a year-over-year revenue increase of 8%, which fell just shy of estimates. However, the company reported better-than-expected profit, and Musk said on the earnings call that his “best guess” is that “vehicle growth” will reach 20% to 30% next year, due to “lower cost vehicles” and the “advent of autonomy.” That forecast was ahead of analysts’ predictions. Don’t miss these insights from CNBC PRO This is the biggest AI winner two years after ChatGPT’s debut — and it’s not Nvidia Goldman Sachs has a trading strategy to score a few big wins before year end Bernstein says this tech stock is its best idea for 2025, could be added to S&P 500 Oracle is on pace for the best year since 1999. What led to the meteoric rise WATCH: Tesla’s