President Trump’s erratic “the-world-is-on-fire” executive orders, pronouncements, and tweets have left the world’s economies and markets in chaos. Perhaps that’s what he wants… or maybe he doesn’t know what he wants. Possibly, he paid someone else to attend his world economy classes at the Wharton School.
There is usually a method to anyone’s madness or ignorance. Despite all the chaos, Wall Street stock traders have detected a pattern in President Trump’s behavior. After riding the roller coaster since Liberation Day (the day Trump initiated the real or fake trade war), traders have observed a Trump pattern. They call it TACO.
Wall Street investors watched as Trump imposed arbitrarily higher tariffs on every country, including islands inhabited by penguins, and the stock markets fell in the opposite direction. After all the bombast, the markets reacted negatively ($10 TRILLION disappeared from the world economy) and Trump quietly lowered the tariffs or put them on “pause.” After going through several cycles of this drama queen behavior, which MAGA world called clever “negotiation”, Wall Street found an acronym for Trump’s behavior. They assigned TACO as his acronym, which stands for “Trump Always Chickens Out.”
A more apt acronym might be IHAPABYHD, but TACO is more succinct and descriptive. IHAPABYHD refers to the big bad wolf who says to the third pig with a stone house, “I’ll huff, and I’ll puff, and I’ll blow your house down!” IHAPABYHD works for weak, creepy Republicans like Marco Rubio, JD Vance, and Lindsay Graham, whose houses are made of straw; however, when faced with the reality of a stone house, President TACO ALWAYS chickens out. In the IHAPABYHD nursery rhyme, after the big bad wolf fails to blow down the third pig’s stone house, he tries to sneak down the chimney. The pig has a pot of boiling water ready, and the wolf falls into it. We all know that President TACO’s bone spurs prevent him from climbing up to the chimney, so he will undoubtedly get one of his minions (he cannot use Rudy Giuliani or the My Pillow Guy, who have already been boiled) to fall into the boiling water.
Trump tries to use IHAPABYHD behavior with virtually everyone. The latest examples of his bullying behavior are White House Oval Office smackdowns with the leaders of South Africa and Ukraine. Those living in stone homes or with nothing to lose ignore Trump and his IHAPABYHD. Putin told the world that Trump is having emotional problems, and Trump says, “he is unhappy with Putin.” What happened to the big, bad wolf? He is simply our President TACO.
When a journalist asked Trump about his new TACO moniker, he went ballistic. When he dismissed the question with, “that’s a NASTY question”, it is clear that a Trump nerve was hit.
For a robust analysis of President TACO’s reign of terror on the world economy, see this excellent discussion by Jeffrey Sachs.
It is easier to understand why President TACO is attacking Dr. Sachs’ alma mater, Harvard. If knowledge is power, ignorance is President TACO.