Has Elon Musk Met His Match?

A Brazilian Supreme Court justice named Alexandre de Moraes may be the first person willing and able to win a game of chicken with the world’s most obnoxious billionaire. Fed up with the unchecked flow of disinformation and defamation on X, not to mention X’s refusal, in contravention of Brazilian law, to remove the posts, De Moraes summoned X’s Brazilian representative—who resigned rather than meet with the court. When Musk failed to appoint a successor, de Moraes ordered telecoms regulator Anatel to block access to X in Brazil.?

Musk still refused to moderate posts, or appoint a new representative, and said that if Brazil blocked X, he’d beam it in anyway via his Starlink satellites. So de Moraes ratcheted things up, ordering a freeze on Starlink’s Brazilian bank accounts to collect the $3 million in fines that X owes for violating his orders. Starlink said it wouldn't block X until Brazil unfroze its assets, and posted a note—on X, of course—challenging the legality of de Moraes’ moves.?

Then, in words Musk has probably never used before, the company posted a new statement: “Regardless of the illegal treatment of Starlink in freezing of our assets, we are complying with the order to block access to X in Brazil,” it said.?

De Moraes responded (in a court decision, not on X), “Elon Musk showed his total disrespect for Brazilian sovereignty and, in particular, for the judiciary, setting himself up as a true supranational entity and immune to the laws of each country.”

The controversy is hardly over. At root is Musk’s full-throated support for Brazil’s former president, right-wing demagogue Jair Bolsonaro, who was voted out of office, barred from running again and put under criminal investigation. But with the backing of Musk, X accounts and allies in the U.S. Republican Party, Bolsonaro is again a political force in Brazil, with 39% of Brazilians saying they’d vote for him, even though he is legally barred from running in the next election, in 2026.

What will Musk do next? Will he start moderating Brazilian X, and weeding out right-wing disinformation and hate speech? Will Brazilian conservatives manage to get de Moraes’ rulings overturned? For now, it’s clear Musk blinked, and that may not serve him well when the European Union considers sanctions on X for breaking content rules, which could run as steep as 6% of X’s global turnover.

Brazil’s populist left-wing president (and long-time Musk nemesis) Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva summed it up this week when he said what a lot of people would like to say: “The world is not obliged to put up with Musk’s far-right anything-goes attitude just because he is rich.”

The Usual Suspects

• That Crazy Stock Market: When my sister went for her first post-MBA Wall Street interview, the banker she met with asked her why stock prices go up and down. Boggled by the inanity of the question, she delivered a reply for the ages: “Because people buy them and people sell them.” That’s about all that can be said for this week’s market rollercoaster. The Dow and the S&P 500 are each down less than 2% in a short week, even as some stocks, like Nvidia, got battered. Then again, the Fed is now likely to lower interest rates this month, which means stock prices should rise. But then the jobs report expected on Friday may show lower than expected growth. But then a rate cut should spur homebuying so stocks should rise. Or maybe … it’s just people buying and selling shares?
• What’s Good for Goldman Is Good for America: The world’s most profitable bank says a Kamala Harris win in November would boost the economy and add jobs, but a Donald Trump victory would knock half a percentage point off economic growth next year.?
• Labor Unrest: Longshoreman in U.S. ports are planning to strike over “over-automation,” and more than 10,000 hotel workers across the U.S. walked off the job for better pay and a reversal of Covid-era staffing and service cuts.?
• Wonderful World of No TV: Disney’s channels, including ESPN and ABC, went dark for DirecTV satellite customers on Sunday, in a game of commercial chicken. DirecTV says Disney is charging too much; Disney says the satellite carrier isn’t paying enough. The tiff comes as more consumers drop cable and linear programming for apps and streaming services, which could hurt both firms.
• Taming the Beast: The Fed’s favorite inflation index, the Personal Consumption Expenditures index, showed a 2.5% annual inflation rate in July, according to new data. That is expected to keep the Fed on course for a rate cut later this month.
• Your Mail Is in the Mail: Trump-appointed postmaster general Louis DeJoy says he may cut service to rural areas to save money.
• Semaglutide Fever: Drugmaker Eli Lilly is fighting back against low-budget versions of its weight-loss drugs Mounjaro and Zepbound, saying the FDA-announced shortages that allowed compounding pharmacies to make the drug, alongside copies of NovoNordisk’s Ozempic and Wegovy, are over. Lilly’s also introducing a lower-priced version of its drug.?
• Dollar Short: Discount chain Dollar General has warned that low-income households, its prime customer base, are running out of money, as it released poor results that sent its shares down 30%.
• Elsewhere in Elon’s World: Trump says he’ll hire Elon to head a commission on cutting government spending. ? X investors say they’ve written down the value of their stake in what used to be Twitter, making it official that Musk’s $44 billion purchase of the social media site was what experts call a bad business move. The Washington Post ran the numbers, and says Twitter is now worth about $24 billion, and possibly far less. ? Crypto scammers allegedly hacked the X accounts of Lara and Tiffany Trump to promote a new cryptocurrency that Donald Trump is actually backing, but the allegedly fake posts linked to an allegedly fake website. ? A federal judge in New York said Musk is full of hot air. Ruling against a lawsuit claiming Musk falsely promised investors high returns for buying Dogecoin, judge Alvin Hellerstein said Musk’s comments on Dogecoin were “puffery” and hype, not a serious promise of value.

No Immaculate Reception for U.S. Steel

Back in 1972, the Pittsburgh Steelers were trailing the Oakland Raiders 7–6 in the NFL playoffs. On fourth down with 22 seconds left in the game, Steelers quarterback Terry Bradshaw threw a pass to Steeler John Fuqua. The ball bounced off the helmet of Raiders safety Jack Tatum and into the hands of Steelers fullback Franco Harris, who caught it just before it hit the ground and ran for a game-winning touchdown.?

It’s a miracle that’s celebrated in Pittsburgh as the Immaculate Reception, but no such miracle awaits the city’s most famous industry, U.S. Steel. At least not after Joe Biden, Kamala Harris and Donald Trump found one thing they could all agree on: The troubled business should remain American owned and operated, not sold to Japan’s Nippon Steel for about $15 billion. The United Steelworkers union, too, says jobs and national security are at stake.?

Nippon is the fourth largest steelmaker in the world, and U.S.steel is 27th. Together they’d reach no. 2, behind a Chinese company. Supporters of the deal call it friendshoring, as U.S. allies seek to invest in the world’s strongest economy, and note that new investment and new technology from Nippon would boost U.S. Steel’s production, and make its plants greener, guaranteeing jobs for years to come. But the union is peeved that Nippon didn’t meet with it when holding talks with U.S. Steel management, and now they’re flexing their muscle. Without Japanese investment, analysts say U.S. Steel will likely end up weaker and smaller over the next few years.?

The Short Stack

• The Nordstroms Want Their Store Back: Nordstrom family members and a Mexican retail chain want to take the high-end department store private, offering $23 a share, less than half the $50 a share they offered in a failed bid in 2019. Nordstrom family members still run the company, but they say going private will relieve the pressure for constant growth in an industry that that is comfortably stable but not growing. Shares of Nordstrom closed at $22.82 on Tuesday, up 42% from a year ago.
• Oasis U.K. Ticket Outrage: Half a world away, the talk was of Liam and Noel Gallagher and the gazooming price of tickets to their Oasis reunion tour, which doubled while some fans were online trying to buy seats. Was it planned? That’s what the UK’s culture secretary wants to know, and she’s calling an inquiry into dynamic pricing.
• VW’s Big Fake Trial: Volkswagen’s former CEO is going on trial in Germany on charges he helped cover up the decade-long use of software that falsely lowered emissions numbers that were, in reality, far above legal limits in Europe and the U.S. The scandal cost VW tens of billions of dollars.?

Death, Taxes, and Lawsuits

Hewlett-Packard says it will pursue its $4 billion lawsuit against British tech entrepreneur Mike Lynch, who died with his teenage daughter when the sailboat they were on sank off Sicily last month. The civil fraud suit relates to the $11 billion sale of his software firm, Autonomy, to HP in 2011. In June, Lynch was acquitted of criminal charges in the deal and was celebrating on the yacht when it went down in a storm, killing seven. HP claims Autonomy execs lied about the state of the business, and say they had to write down its value by $8.8 billion. A U.K. judge is expected to issue a ruling in the long-running case later this year.

Peter S. Green is a veteran reporter and editor who has spent more than two decades covering business and finance from Eastern Europe to New York City, and has worked for Bloomberg News, The New York Post, The New York Times and The Messenger. He lives in New York City and is always looking for the next big story.