Trump Insult Goes Viral

Donald Trump is pushing back hard against a new nickname from Wall Street that mocks his frequent reversals on tariff threats. The term TACO, short for “Trump Always Chickens Out” has been making the rounds among investors and analysts, and the former president isn’t taking it lightly.

During a recent exchange with a journalist who asked for his reaction to the nickname, Trump snapped, calling it offensive. “Don’t ever say what you say, that’s a nasty question,” he said. “To me that’s the nastiest question.” He dismissed the suggestion that his shifting positions on tariffs reflect any kind of retreat, insisting the criticism is misplaced. “They will say, ‘Oh, he was chicken, he was chicken.’ That’s so unbelievable,” Trump said, referencing his recent decision to delay a tariff hike on the European Union. “I usually have the opposite problem they say you’re too tough!”

The TACO label, originally coined by the Financial Times, has caught on in financial circles as a way to describe a recurring pattern: Trump makes aggressive tariff threats, markets react, and then he scales them back allowing investors to profit off the volatility. The strategy may frustrate some economists, but for Wall Street, it’s become a predictable cycle that can be exploited.

Just a week after declaring “Liberation Day” with a sweeping slate of new global tariffs, Trump reversed course and announced they would all be cut down to a baseline 10 percent. That included the 145 percent retaliatory tariff he had announced against China, which quickly dropped as tensions between the two countries eased and a new trade agreement was reached.

The pattern repeated itself again just last week. Trump floated the idea of imposing a 50 percent tariff on goods from the European Union, but within days he extended the deadline for the new tariffs into July, giving negotiators more time to work out a deal.

Critics say the flip-flops undermine global confidence in U.S. trade policy and create instability for businesses. But Trump and his allies insist the unpredictability is intentional a part of his broader strategy to keep other countries off balance and bring them to the negotiating table on American terms.

Still, the growing use of the TACO acronym reflects a broader skepticism, especially from financial insiders who now view the former president’s boldest threats as more bluster than bite. And while Trump maintains that he’s the toughest negotiator in the room, the markets are beginning to predict something else entirely.