Trump Always Chickens Out

"Trump Always Chickens Out" (TACO) is a pejorative description of the perceived tendency of United States president Donald Trump to make threats, only to later delay or renege on them as a way to increase time for negotiations, allow markets to rebound, and avert backlash. The phrase was popularized in May 2025 after the many threats and reversals during the trade war he initiated with his "Liberation Day" tariffs. On Wall Street, a TACO trade is 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.

By 2026, TACO was also used for Trump's decisions in the realm of foreign policy, specifically his reversal of threats to annex Greenland, his attempt to find an abrupt exit for the escalating 2026 Iran War as global securities began to fall due to the rise in oil prices, and his last-minute ceasefire deal for the Iran War itself before the deadline for the American bombing campaign.

Background

Trump's tendency to change his mind on policy positions had been described since his first presidential campaign. Before the emergence of the TACO acronym, observers used terms such as backtrack and flip-flop. 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.

This tendency continued to be reported in the lead up to, and during, Trump's second presidency, with commentators noting specific issues including trade, immigration, and international relationships.

Origins

"TACO trade" was first used by the Financial Times journalist Robert Armstrong in a May 2, 2025 opinion piece that discussed tariffs and their effects on the US markets. 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".

Chickening out is English slang for being frightened and deciding against a planned course of action. The French press have used "Trump always deflates", and some Italian papers use an idiom that translates roughly as "always wets himself".

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. 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.

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.

On June 11, 2025, Trump posted on Truth Social that he had reached a deal in the US's trade war with China. 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". 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". Fareed Zakaria of 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)". 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. Bloomberg reported that Trump has softened his hardline tone on China to ensure a summit with General Secretary of the Chinese Communist Party Xi Jinping, aiming to push for a trade agreement between America and China.

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. 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 ten 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 US withdrawal from Afghanistan without any meaningful concessions from the Taliban in return.

The term was used to describe Trump's attitude to Russia's president Vladimir Putin in 2025. Trump repeatedly threatened to impose further sanctions on Russia if it did not stop its war against Ukraine. Putin ignored the warnings, and Trump did not follow through on them. Trump threatened "extreme consequences" if Russia did not agree to a ceasefire by 8 August 2025. When the deadline came, Trump instead announced that he would host Putin in Alaska. After the summit, Trump suggested the onus was now on Ukraine to give up territory to end the war.

In January 2026, TACO was widely used to describe Trump's reversal of his threats to annex Greenland and impose tariffs on NATO allies who opposed him. Following the 2026 Iran protests, after Trump threatened the Iranian leadership with military intervention, TACO was used by commentators to describe Trump's actions when they did not materialize at the time. Instead, the United States pursued nuclear negotiations with Iran, before later launching strikes alongside Israel, which had started attacks on Iran during the course of those negotiations.

As the subsequent 2026 Iran war began to impact global oil and securities markets, analysts assessed that Trump's attempt to TACO out of the conflict might not be feasible as Iran did not seem willing to compromise, showing the limits of threats followed by a U-turn. In April 2026, Trump issued a deadline, set for 8 April on 8:00 pm EDT, where he threatened to bomb all of Iran's power plants and bridges, if Iran did not agree to his demands. Two days before the deadline, Iran had proposed a ten-point peace plan in which Trump had rejected and told reporters that it was "not good enough". However about an hour and 20 minutes before the deadline was set to expire, Trump backed away from his ultimatum and suspended planned strikes for two weeks as part of a ceasefire agreement, stating that Iran's ten-point peace proposal was a "workable" basis for further negotiations.

Related uses

A variant of "TACO" called "EACO" (Europe Always Chickens Out) or "EUCO" has been applied to the European Union as well during trade negotiations with the US since his global trade war. Criticized as a process of appeasement, the EU avoided using its so-called "anti-coercion mechanisms" in retaliation for Trump's tariffs and instead attempted to negotiate a deal with the US with the tariffs applied. The EU's appeasement process stems from fears that Trump would withdraw military defense from Europe, especially in regard to the Russo-Ukrainian War. As a result, it repeatedly delayed counter-tariff packages meant to target specific imported goods from the US.

The United States has been noted to be able to exploit the EU's dependence on it, especially due to the internal divisions and lack of strategy from the EU. Of note was that the EU officials previously refused to accept 10% tariffs on exported goods to the US. The EU later agreed to a trade deal in which most of its exported goods to the US would be subjected to 15% tariffs in exchange for no tariffs applied to US goods. Critics have argued that the EU under the European Commission president Ursula von der Leyen surrendered to the US, with John O'Brien of the Irish Examiner arguing that it showed weakness and refused to accept short term pain for long term benefits. Lionel Laurent of Bloomberg News described the uneven trade deal as a threat towards the EU's already weak economic growth and remarked that "[m]aybe it isn't Trump who always chickens out."

Reactions

In politics and economy

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". According to CNN, Trump had not yet heard the term, and he first understood that Cassella was calling him a chicken.

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 tariff war keeps hurting American businesses. 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.

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." 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."

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".

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. 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."

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." Vice President JD Vance criticized 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."

Zeeshan Aleem, writing for MSNBC, criticized 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."

In the media

Almost immediately after Trump's response, multiple memes about Trump mentioned TACO or "Trump Always Chickens Out". The memes often employed generative AI to produce artificial images and video of Trump in situations parodying the term. Editorial cartoons parodied Trump's reaction, frequently utilizing puns and exaggerated caricatures of Putin and Trump.

TACO has been widely reported in the international press, with the phrase translated into Estonian (Trump lööb alati vedelaks), French (Trump se dégonfle toujours), German (Trump macht immer einen Rückzieher), Norwegian (Trump trekker seg alltid), Slovene (Trump se vedno ustraši), Spanish (Trump siempre se acobarda), Brazilian Portuguese (Trump sempre amarela), 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".

External links

Media related to Trump Always Chickens Out at Wikimedia Commons