This may be the biggest risk to a deal - that it could get unwound in 2029.”For Beijing, a merger would effectively place ⁠Tesla’s sprawling Shanghai manufacturing hub under the same corporate umbrella as SpaceX, a company that has become deeply embedded in US military and national security activities through its Pentagon work and through Starlink’s role in conflicts, including Ukraine.“A formal merger would make it harder for Chinese authorities to treat Tesla as a ‌purely commercial actor, raising risks for future factory expansions, data approvals, or market access,” said Alicia Garcia-Herrero, a senior research fellow at the Brussels-based Bruegel think tank.Tesla’s reliance on production from Shanghai already gives China considerable leverage over Musk’s business empire. A merger could extend that control to a broader corporate group encompassing strategically important assets such as satellite communications, launch services and military-related technologies.The deal would also have to navigate a maze of reviews around the world as competition authorities assess its impact on industries ranging from automobiles and satellite communications to artificial intelligence and semiconductors.Musk’s close relationship with Trump would likely dispel concerns about potential US regulatory roadblocks to a transaction, analysts said, while antitrust experts see limited competition concerns because the ‌companies operate largely in separate markets.Outside the United States, however, foreign regulators are likely to scrutinize whether a combined company would gain an unfair advantage by integrating technologies spanning automobiles, ​artificial intelligence and aerospace.Antitrust experts said authorities in markets with powerful domestic auto industries, such as China and South Korea, could examine whether Tesla’s access to SpaceX technologies would give it an advantage that rivals cannot replicate, creating barriers for competitors ⁠and potentially undermining domestic manufacturers.Regulators could respond by requiring the company to license key technologies to competitors as part of any approval, said Ioannis Kokkoris, a ⁠law professor at Queen Mary University of London.A South Korean antitrust official told Reuters that the merger, if pursued, could require an in-depth review of its potential impact on that country’s industries.“Korean antitrust officials will be wary of the merger.

They will take ‌the merger very seriously,” said Lee Hwang, a law professor at Korea University and former Korea Fair Trade Commission official.“The stakes are very high in Korea because it regards both the automotive and aerospace sectors as strategically important industries.”