TACO

This appeared as an acronym standing for ‘Trump Always Chickens Out’ in a piece in the British Financial Times in May 2025 by journalist Robert Armstrong who argued that as soon as the American market experienced distress, Trump dropped the policy that was causing the pain.

It might have ended there except for the fact that Trump’s changes of mood and mind gave us plenty of opportunities to use TACO again.  The theory was supported by examples such as the Liberation Day tariffs, the demand for the termination of the Federal Reserve chair Jerome Powell, and the roll-back of trade tariffs against China during trade talks in May.  But really there have been so many, in foreign relations as well as in finance.

And now we are asking ourselves ‘Will Trump TACO over Iran’, so the noun has become a verb, giving it even greater substance. Our own Financial Review says ‘Trump will TACO in Iran, but he has to figure out how first’.