How a columnist's catchphrase caused an Oval Office stir
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At a press conference Wednesday, President Trump had a very unhappy reaction to being asked about the "TACO trade" — a shorthand for Trump Always Chickens Out.
Why it matters: Traders have been using TACO to describe the belief that the president will back off on a big tariff threat if the markets sink in response.
- It happened after "Liberation Day," and more recently last weekend when the president threatened 50% tariffs on the European Union. The market dropped — only to recover after the president said he'd give the EU more time to negotiate.
- TACO is a catchier version of what Wall Street had been calling the Trump put, which investors relied on in the president's first term.
State of play: Trump was asked about a spate of TACO-related headlines while taking questions in the Oval Office Wednesday.
- "I've never heard that, you mean because I reduced China from 145%," he said, then detailing how he stepped down that threat, as well as the higher rate on the EU.
- "But don't ever say what you said. That's a nasty question."
Zoom out: Financial Times columnist Robert Armstrong felt some dread about the whole thing, he told Axios later in the day.
- Armstrong, who writes the FTs Unhedged newsletter, came up with the term TACO a few months ago.
- "I needed a shorthand way in my newsletter to describe this pattern, because it was an important pattern in markets. And perhaps I was hungry, too, and so I came up with the acronym TACO."
- It didn't take off at first.
- "It was definitely not becoming a thing, but I kept using it because it had utility for me, and then it sort of started to appear in brokers notes. And, you know, people started mentioning it to me, and then it shows up in a New York Times headline, and today, somebody is putting a question to the president."
Friction point: Apparently, sometimes the markets don't need TACO. The courts intervene instead.
- Wednesday night, a panel of judges at the U.S. Court of International Trade blocked most of the tariffs the Trump administration has put in place — ruling he didn't have the authority to implement them.
The bottom line: "I want to be famous for my dumb joke, definitely, but I also don't want the president to ruin the U.S. economy," Armstrong says. "And so I'd like to have both of those things, if at all possible."
