Trump lashes out at claim he’s a ‘chicken’ when it comes to trade

U.S. President Donald Trump may be many things, but he wants the world to know he’s no “chicken” when it comes to fiscal policy, despite what appears to be a tendency to recoil in the face of resistance from economic partners and foes — a behaviour financial analysts have coined “TACO” trade.

The president’s propensity to threaten and then momentarily impose outrageous import taxes on U.S. trade partners, only to retreat when met with retaliation, paved the way for the acronym created by the Financial Times’ Robert Armstrong.

It stands for “Trump Always Chickens Out,” and has come to encapsulate what Trump says is a legitimate form of negotiation. Under conditions created by his erratic manoeuvres, markets tend to sell off when a new tariff threat emerges and then recover after the president backs down.