TACO Trump goes viral, as analyst confirms the US President does ‘chicken out’
It didn’t take long for social media to jump on to US President Donald Trump’s latest, unedifying nickname.
Earlier this month, Financial Times columnist Robert Armstrong coined an acronym to describe a popular trading strategy centred around Trump’s start-and-stop tariff policies – TACO (Trump Always Chickens Out).
Introduced to this moniker at a media conference on Thursday Australian time, the President was not happy.
Asked what he thought of the term, Trump said he was unaware of it.
“I chicken out? Oh, I’ve never heard that. You mean because I reduced China from 145 per cent that I set down to 100 and then to another number?” he said, referring to tariff rates he imposed on imported Chinese goods.
The tariff rate for China is now 30 per cent.
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Last week, Trump threatened to impose 50 per cent tariffs on goods from the European Union on June 1, causing shares to slide.
“You call that chickening out?” Trump said.
“It’s called negotiation.”
He admitted part of his tactic included setting “a ridiculous high number” for tariff rates and going down if he got other nations to give in to his demands.
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“Don’t ever say what you said,” he said, calling it “the nastiest question”.
Nasty or not, it has certainly inspired social media posters to generate a slew of mocking online memes.
So does Trump always chicken out?
According to a note to subscribers on Thursday from respected Wall Street market analyst Tom Essaye, the answer is yes.
In the note, the Sevens Report Research founder pointed to Trump’s decision to exempt goods subject to the US-Mexico-Canada Agreement from additional tariffs on Mexico and Canada, significantly reducing their sting.
He also noted Trump postponed all “reciprocal” tariffs against US trading partners just a week after his market-shaking “liberation day” announcement on April 2.
“The returns are somewhat conclusive: The TACO trade has worked and buying stocks on extreme tariff-related threats has worked,” Essaye wrote.
Sharemarket investors aren’t the only ones taking note of Trump’s apparent TACO tendencies.
On Wednesday, Russian state propagandists mocked the President for lacking any follow-through, predicting in a tweet that Trump’s “playing with fire” threat would be reversed by a social media post the following morning.
