Trump Always Chickens Out (TACO) is a term that gained prominence in May 2025 after many threats and reversals during the trade warDonald Trump initiated with his administration's "Liberation Day" tariffs.[1]
The acronym is used to describe Trump's tendency to make tariff threats, only to later delay them as a way to increase time for negotiations and for markets to rebound.[1][2] The term originated on Wall Street, where the TACO trade involves buying stocks cheaply after a tariff announcement pushes stocks lower, then selling them at a profit after the tariffs are delayed or reduced and the market rebounds.
Background
Trump's tendency to change his mind on policy positions had been described since his first presidential campaign.[3] Before the emergence of the TACO acronym, observers used terms such as backtrack[4] and flip-flop.[5][6][7] Wall Street traders called it the "Trump put" when, during his first term, he would change a policy if the markets reacted badly to it.[8][9]
The term was first used by Financial Times journalist Robert Armstrong in a May 2, 2025 opinion piece that discussed tariffs and their effects on the US markets.[20] In the piece, part of a series titled "Unhedged", Armstrong said that markets were 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". Armstrong called this "the Taco theory: Trump Always Chickens Out".[21][22]
Examples
Tariffs
Katie Martin of the Financial Times gave three examples of "the Taco factor" where Trump had reversed a decision in response to the market's reaction: Trump setting high "Liberation Day tariffs" and pausing them a week later, his calling for the termination of Federal Reserve chair Jerome Powell before distancing himself from the idea, and the US committing to roll back tariffs against China during trade talks in May.[23] Another example is when Trump would delay his 50% tariff proposal affecting EU imports to July 9, this would later cause European markets to rally.[24][25]
Shannon Pettypiece of NBC News gave ten examples of Trump having "threatened, then backtracked on, tariffs" since taking office, saying that in her view Trump had threatened "far more" tariffs than he had imposed.[26]
A Truth Social post from Donald Trump announcing a reversal of some tariffs against China, seen by analysts as Trump having "chickened out".
On June 11, 2025, Trump posted on Truth Social that he had reached a deal in the US's trade war with China.[27]ABC News noted that a Chinese spokesperson said it was a "framework" to consolidate the agreements reached in May, and that the talks represented the "first meeting". Secretary of Commerce Howard Lutnick referred to the agreement as a "handshake for a framework".[28]The Wall Street Journal published an editorial criticizing the deal, calling it a "truce that tilts in China's direction" by appearing to be "resetting their trade relationship to where it was a few months ago before a tit-for-tat escalation".[29][30]Fareed Zakaria of the The Washington Post saw the vague trade deal as an example of "TACO", except for "one twist", that Americans "will still pay a tariff rate of 55 percent on goods from China (compared to China's 10 percent tariff on American goods)".[31] On July 8, 2025, Trump again announced a delay in implementing tariffs against 14 countries, pushing back the deadline for negotiations from July 9 to August 1.[32]Bloomberg reported that Trump has softened his hardline tone on China to ensure a summit with General Secretary of the Chinese Communist PartyXi Jinping, aiming to push for a trade agreement between America and China.[33]
Foreign relations
Gideon Rachman of the Financial Times wrote that "Trump always chickens out on foreign policy too," citing a paper by Jeremy Shapiro of the European Council on Foreign Relations that found that Trump had threatened the use of force against foreign adversaries on 22 occasions (as of early 2025), but actually did so on only two occasions.[34] For example, during his first term, Trump threatened "fire and fury" against North Korea and threatened to wipe Afghanistan "off the face of the earth" within 10 days; Trump followed through in neither case, instead entering failed negotiations with North Korea over its nuclear program and entering into an agreement for a U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan without any meaningful concessions from the Taliban in return.[34]
Reactions
In politics and economy
Donald Trump was asked by Megan Cassella, a CNBC Correspondent, what he thought about the term on May 28, 2025, during a swearing-in ceremony for the acting attorney general. He denied the behavior, saying "it's called negotiation". He called the question a "nasty question", adding "I usually have the opposite problem. They say I am too tough".[20][35] According to CNN, Trump had not yet heard the term, and he first understood that Cassella was calling him a chicken.[36]
Lawrence O'Donnell pointed out Trump's policies and actions that, in his opinion, will be reversed by the courts, but which, together with the reversals Trump himself has done, characterize him as an ineffective president since everybody is increasingly aware that he will back down, giving rise to the acronym TACO, while the tariffs war keeps hurting American businesses.[37]The New York Times quoted analysts Salomon Fiedler of Berenberg Bank, Paul Donovan of UBS Wealth Management, and Chris Beauchamp of IG Group, saying that Trump's tariff threats don't last.[24]
On May 28, 2025, the United States Court of International Trade (CIT) ruled that Trump had overreached his authority under the International Emergency Economic Powers Act (IEEPA) and vacated all tariffs related to it. This prompted California Governor Gavin Newsom to comment, "It's raining tacos today."[38][39]Reuters published a note about acronyms popular among investors four months into Trump's second term: YOLO, TACO, MEGA, MAGA (Make America Go Away), and FAFO. When reached for comment, White House spokesman Kush Desai said in an email, "these asinine acronyms convey how unserious analysts have consistently beclowned themselves by mocking President Trump and his agenda that've already delivered multiple expectation-beating jobs and inflation reports, trillions in investment commitments, a historic UK trade agreement, and rising consumer confidence."[40]
In an interview with Nicolle Wallace on MSNBC on May 30, economist Justin Wolfers coined additional acronyms about Trump's actions themed on Mexican food: Burrito – the "Blatantly Unconstitutional Rewriting of the Rules of International Trade, Obviously". He said that the correct response would be to invoke Churro – the "Courts Have Ultimate Responsibility to Restore Order"[41]
David A. Graham, writing for The Atlantic, recalled his own 2018 analysis of Trump's "pattern of nearly always folding" on international politics during his first term, pointing out that Wall Street is just "catching on," and given that now Trump knows about the TACO trade expression it could mean that he may make bad choices and persist on them, causing the markets to tank.[42] In an interview for Reuters, in the context of Trump's May 30 announcement of increased tariffs on steel and aluminum, Joachim Klement, head of strategy at the investment bank Panmure Liberum said, "We think that, unfortunately, as the so-called TACO trade becomes more viral, it becomes more likely that Trump will stick to higher tariffs just to prove a point."[43][44]
On June 3, 2025, a Tuesday, the Democratic National Committee parked a rented taco truck, customized with images of Trump wearing a chicken costume, outside the Republican National Committee headquarters, and distributed free tacos to passers-by "as an effective way to draw attention to Trump's tariff policies, which they described as "playing games with working families' livelihoods."[45][46] Vice President JD Vance criticised the opposition party as "lame," to which the DNC answered calling him "the cringiest VP in American history," and mentioning that the One Big Beautiful Bill Act is likely to "take away food from people."
[47]
Zeeshan Aleem, writing for MSNBC, criticised Democrats using TACO as a political slogan because it is inexact, as Trump was (as of June 2025) maintaining both baseline and specific tariffs. Also, because "Why on Earth would Democrats dare Trump to follow through on his most extreme tariff threats?" Aleem quotes Robert Armstrong lamenting the impact of his creation: "Let us state clearly, chickening out is good and something to be celebrated. Bad policy chickening out, hooray." Finally, because if the Democrats' message is that Trump is a threat to democracy, "it's a bit odd to simultaneously argue that Trump is all talk and no action."[48]
In the media
An AI-generated image of Donald Trump dressed as a chicken and holding tacos
Almost immediately after Trump's response, the term started a trend of memes about Trump referencing the TACO acronym or the phrase directly. The memes often employed generative AI to produce artificial images and video of Trump in situations parodying the viral term.[49][50]Editorial cartoons parodied Trump's reaction to the term, frequently utilizing puns and exaggerated caricatures of Putin and Trump.[51]
The term has been widely reported in the international press,[52][53][54] with the phrase translated into Estonian (Trump lööb alati vedelaks),[55] French (Trump se dégonfle toujours),[56] German (Trump macht immer einen Rückzieher),[57] Norwegian (Trump trekker seg alltid),[58] Slovene (Trump se vedno ustraši),[59] Spanish (Trump siempre se acobarda),[60] Brazilian Portuguese (Trump sempre amarela),[61] and other languages.
The View hosts Whoopi Goldberg, Joy Behar and Ana Navarro praised the TACO phrase on their show. Navarro's analysis and discussion of the nickname with other cohosts included why they suspected the name gained traction and what led to the name's popularity, stating "For a nickname to be effective, there's got to be truth to it, which this has: His trade policy is all over the place [...] And it's got to get under the person's skin, which it clearly did". Host Sara Haines noted Trump's common use of insulting nicknames for public figures he dislikes. Navarro also likened the trending nickname to "karma" for Trump's previous actions relating to Mexico in the beginning of his second term, including banning the Associated Press from White House press events due to their refusal to refer to the Gulf of Mexico as the "Gulf of America".[62]
See also
China's final warning – A joke of similar vein in Soviet and now popular Russian discourse poking fun at incessant "final" threats which never come to fruition.
^Jane C. Timm (July 26, 2016). "The 141 Stances Donald Trump Took During His White House Bid. To understand and track Trump's views, we've compiled a list of his past and present positions on issues since he announced his candidacy". NBC News. Archived from the original on July 6, 2016. Retrieved June 21, 2025. [Updated November 28, 2016] President-Elect Donald Trump took 141 distinct stances on 23 major issues during his bid for the White House. [Subjects are:] Immigration. Young undocumented immigrants and children of illegal immigrants. Proposed Muslin ban. Visas for high-skilled workers. Border control and the refugee crisis. Defeating ISIS. Guns. 'First use' and nuclear arms. Minimum wage. Taxes. Climate change. National debt. Abortion. Whether President Obama was born in America. Voting for the Iraq War. 2011 intervention in Libya. Japan and nukes. Money in politics. Violating U.S. and international laws with regard to torture, terrorism. Ku Klux Klan and David Duke. The Iran nuclear deal. Health Care. Rigged election/Political system. Accepting the outcome of the election.
^Jeremy Diamond (April 1, 2016). "Abortion and 10 other Donald Trump flip-flops". CNN. Archived from the original on July 8, 2025. Retrieved June 21, 2025. (...) But Trump's flip-flop on Wednesday was just the most recent one. Here are 10 examples: Nuclear proliferation. The Iraq War. Afghanistan War. Abortion. Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Torture. Immigration. Gun control. Muslim ban. Hillary Clinton.
^Jane C. Timm (November 19, 2016). "Tracking President Trump's Flip-Flops. NBC News is tracking Trump's new policy pronouncements. Here are the issues that he's flip-flopped on". NBC News. Archived from the original on June 21, 2025. Retrieved June 21, 2025. (...) Overall, Trump has taken 32 new stances on 13 different issues since his election. The president's shifting agenda has established him as one of the most unpredictable American leaders in modern history. (...) In order to better understand the president, we've tracked Trump's new policy pronouncements and flip flops on big issues from Election Day forward. FBI Director James Comey's Performance and Firing. Health Care. Immigration Reform, Enforcement. Entitlement Programs. LGBTQ Rights. NATO. Intervention in Syria. Special Interests in Government, "Drain the Swamp." China. Low Interest Rates. Removing Janet Yellen, Federal Reserve Chair. Export-Import Bank. Golfing While President.
^Maggie Astor, Simon J. Levien (September 10, 2024). "'Flip-Flop' or Evolution: Trump and Harris and Their Reversals on Issues". The New York Times. Archived from the original on September 11, 2024. Retrieved June 21, 2025. As former President Donald J. Trump and Vice President Kamala Harris face off in their debate Tuesday night, one likely area of contention will be their mutual accusations of flip-flopping — a charge that politicians have long deployed to portray their opponents as lacking principle. It is true that both have changed some of their policy positions, as politicians often do — whether for political expediency or because their thinking has evolved with new information. But while Ms. Harris has moderated a number of progressive stances she took in the 2020 Democratic primary, Mr. Trump has reversed himself entirely, gone back and forth or avoided taking clear stands on a host of important issues.
^Jordan Erb (March 3, 2025). "Trump's Tariff Flip-Flops Help Send Stocks Lower". Bloomberg News. Archived from the original on March 14, 2025. Retrieved June 21, 2025. On Thursday, Donald Trump signed a few more executive orders. Among the scores he's churned out since taking office, these were unique, since they partially reversed orders from just two days ago. It was the latest backpedal by the White House in the face of furious fallout both at home and abroad to his 25% sanctions against Canada and Mexico.
^Felix Salmon, Zachary Basu (March 7, 2025). "Trump's rug-pull presidency". Axios. Archived from the original on April 16, 2025. Retrieved June 21, 2025. Donald Trump is building a reputation for himself as the flip-flopper in chief — the president who, after announcing a bold new policy today, is more than likely to reverse it tomorrow. Why it matters: In a chaotic and unpredictable world, the federal government normally acts as a stabilizing force. Under Trump, it has become the primary driver of the chaos. The big picture: Across-the-board tariffs on Mexico and Canada — two of America's three largest trading partners — have been on and then off and then on and then off. Colombia knows the feeling.
^Callum Jones (May 10, 2025). "Whiplash reversals mean Trump's erratic trade policy is as clear as mud. The specifics of the administration's economic masterplan – from strollers to movies to China – change by the day". The Guardian. Retrieved June 21, 2025. The US president declared this week to be a key milestone of his second term, as he unveiled his first major trade deal since returning to office following accelerated talks with the UK. But it came as Trump's position, on everything from tariffs on strollers and movies to whether his administration even wants to strike such global deals, appeared to shift by the hour. Firms across the world have been trying to come to terms with the rapid rate of presidential kneejerks: where policies can be announced, adjusted and shelved as quickly as the leader of the free world can publish a social media post.
^Steve Benen (June 16, 2025). "Trump's mass deportation policy becomes a meandering moving target. The president's policy on tariffs has become an unpredictable mess. His approach to mass deportations is increasingly looking similar". MSNBC. Retrieved June 21, 2025. One of the many problems with the policy surrounding Donald Trump's trade tariffs is there doesn't appear to be much of a policy. The president certainly makes all kinds of announcements, but in literally dozens of instances, they're followed by revised announcements and reversals. On an international scale, no one — business owners, consumers, investors, foreign officials, et al. — seems to have any idea what to expect from the White House, and for good reason: The entire agenda is an erratic mess, shaped by an unpredictable and inexperienced politician with a limited understanding of the underlying dynamics.
^Ben Mathis Lilley (June 17, 2025). "Who Is in Charge of the Government? And does he know what his own positions are?". Slate. Archived from the original on June 20, 2025. Retrieved June 21, 2025. Two stories in the news this week raise the question of who is currently in charge of the world's most powerful country, the United States. First, there's the Wall Street Journal piece about how the U.S. government does not believe Israel's claim that Iran is moving forward with an attempt to build a nuclear weapon (...) In a similar vein, there is the Washington Post's new report that Immigration and Customs Enforcement officials have told agents to "continue conducting immigration raids at agricultural businesses, hotels and restaurants." This reverses a directive not to target those venues that was itself issued last week, after Trump posted on his Truth Social site that ICE would back off farms and hotels because "very good, long time workers" were being detained. Compounding the confusion, the (new) Post report notes that the directive that was issued because of Trump's post has been overruled because "the White House did not support it." Who runs the White House? I thought it was the president!
^Pettypiece, Shannon (May 29, 2025). "10 times Trump has threatened, then backtracked on, tariffs as 'TACO trade' jab gains traction". NBC News. Archived from the original on July 31, 2025. Retrieved June 4, 2025. Some financial analysts have taken to calling Trump's on-again, off-again moves TACO trade or the TACO theory – an acronym for 'Trump Always Chickens Out'. [The ten examples are: E.U. tariffs, wine tariff, Canada and Mexico tariffs, film tariff, reciprocal tariffs, China tariffs, iPhone tariff, Colombia tariff, dolls tariff, and auto tariffs.]
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