President Donald Trump rebuked a journalist for posing a ‘nasty’ question regarding his habit of threatening tariffs and then either easing them or delaying their implementation.
A reporter asked Trump about a new acronym making the rounds on Wall Street about the ‘TACO trade’, which stands for ‘Trump Always Chickens Out.’
Trump frequently announces hefty tariffs on countries and various industries, which initially causes market declines. However, days later, he often reverses his stance, opting not to follow through with the tariff plans.
Investors have observed this pattern, taking advantage of the market dips by buying stocks, anticipating that Trump will retract his tariff threats, thus causing their stock values to rise again.
When confronted with the mocking term on Wednesday, Trump denied that he had buckled and said he won concessions due to the pressure of his tariffs.
Trump then fumed at the reporter for the bold question, saying: ‘Don’t ever say what you said.’
‘That’s a nasty question. To me, that’s the nastiest question,’ he said.
Trump – who regularly speaks about the performance of the stock market – at first indicated he had misheard ‘chicken’ as ‘kicked out.’
‘I’ve never heard that – you mean because I reduced China from 145 percent that I set, down to 100 and then down to another number. And I said, you have to open up your whole country?’ he continued.
‘And because I gave the European Union a 50 percent tax – tariff – and they called up and they said, “Please, let’s meet right now. Please, let’s meet right now.” And I said, Okay, I’ll give you till June 9.’
‘I actually asked them, I said, What’s the date? Because they weren’t willing to meet. And after I did what I did, they said, we’ll meet anytime you want, and we have an end date of July 9th. You call that chickening out? Because we have $14 trillion now invested, committed to investing. When Biden didn’t have practically anything.’
The ‘Art of the Deal’ author kept going, both denying being a chicken and ripping the reporter who confronted him with the accusation.
‘This country was dying. You know, we have the hottest country anywhere in the world — Six months ago, this country was stone cold, dead. We had a dead country. We had a country people didn’t think it was going to survive. And you ask a nasty question like that.’
‘It’s called negotiation. You set a number, and if you go down, you know, if I set a number at a ridiculous high number, I go down a little bit, you know, a little bit they want me to hold that number, 145 percent tariff even. I said man, that really got up.’
The ‘TACO’ term was reportedly coined by Financial Times columnist Robert Armstrong in his criticisms of Trump’s tariff approach.
Despite Trump’s defense, for some Wall Street traders, his tariff threats and sudden reversals are becoming as predictable as TACO Tuesday.
That’s the new acronym that has been making the rounds among investors after the president once again threatened to impose a shock 50 percent tariff on the European Union – sending markets dropping – only to announce a sudden ‘pause’ on Sunday.
‘Trump Always Chickens Out’ is the acronym that has been proliferating online and among Trump critics on the airwaves.
There were some signs Friday that Trump’s capacity to fold was already being baked into the markets on Friday.
The S&P 500 market index dropped 0.67 percent Friday, the day Trump first made the tariff threat. That was a significant tumble, but perhaps fell short of the economic chaos that would ensue if Trump followed through with the crippling tariffs he proposed, after accusing the European Union of being ‘very difficult to deal with’ and ‘taking advantage’ of the U.S.
‘They haven’t treated our country properly’ Trump wrote on Truth Social Friday morning. ‘They banded together to take advantage of us.’
By Sunday, following a conversation with European Union President Ursula von der Leyen, Trump announced a pause. Markets rallied when they reopened Tuesday after the long weekend, with the Dow jumping more than 700 points.
It was a similar pattern with the ‘Liberation Day’ tariffs Trump announced April 2, only to announce a 90-day ‘pause’ after markets tumbled.
When Armstrong coined the term, he wrote in early May that a market rally ‘has a lot to do with markets realizing that the US administration does not have a very high tolerance for market and economic pressure, and will be quick to back off when tariffs cause pain.
‘This is the Taco theory: Trump Always Chickens Out.’
The idea proliferated, and now Trump skeptics have been putting it to use. MSNBC anchor Lawrence O’Donnell posted a graphic of T.A.C.O. on his evening program. A parody account pictured Trump wearing a sombrero.
The New York Times wrote that stocks rallied on the ‘TACO trade,’ and University of Michigan economics professor Justin Wolfers mocked that it was a Trump tariff policy ‘that nearly lasted one entire long weekend.’
The TACO trade, if it exists, can be seen in the 5-day chart showing the performance of the S&P 500. Stocks dropped immediately Friday on Trump’s threat (he also went after Apple over its overseas manufacturing and threatened a 25 percent tariff on the company). The index rose slightly over the course of the day. Then it jumped suddenly when trading reopened on Tuesday after the pause got announced.
