Wall Street traders have coined a new acronym mocking President Trump as they game his wild tariff policies to make millions.
Stockbrokers have taken to telling each other to TACO when hedging their bets on Trump’s market-altering trade policies – stood for ‘Trump Always Chickens Out.’
The term has reportedly gained traction among investors and day traders who say they have found a strategy to make huge profits off Trump’s predictable tariff rollouts.
The president has made a habit of threatening massive tariffs on nations and industries around the world, which send markets plunging, before he ‘chickens out’ days later and doesn’t actually go ahead with the levies.
In an example just this past weekend, Trump announced a crippling 50 percent tariff on European imports, which dropped the Nasdaq by 1.5 percent while treasury yields and the dollar plummeted.
But just two days later, Trump abruptly paused the move after he said he received a ‘very nice call’ from European Union President Ursula von der Leyen, quickly repairing the market’s losses.
Trump also dropped his 145 percent tariff on China down to 30 percent earlier this month, which again sent stocks surging after his ‘Liberation Day’ market meltdown.
The seeming reliability of Trump walking back his tariffs has allowed the TACO strategy to reportedly become openly embraced on Wall Street.
Wall Street traders have coined a new acronym mocking President Trump as they game his wild tariff policies to make millions. Pictured: A trader on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange on April 21, 2025
Stockbrokers have taken to telling each other to TACO when hedging their bets on Trump’s market-altering trade policies – stood for ‘Trump Always Chickens Out’
Financial advisory firm Exit Stage Left Advisors told the New York Post that they have seen traders make huge profits off the dips in Trump’s tariff rollouts.
‘Once he delivers bad news, investors are buying those stocks when they are beaten down waiting for him to chicken out and watching those stocks rebound in value,’ the firm’s president Ted Jenkin told the outlet.
University of Michigan economist Justin Wolfers added to Barron that this emerging strategy is unprecedented in the way the financial markets work with the White House.
Wolfers noted that ‘there was no BACO trade’ under President Joe Biden and ‘no CACO trade’ when Bill Clinton was in office, for example.
‘It was always taken as a given that when the president spoke on Monday, he would likely still mean it on Tuesday,’ he said.
‘That’s no longer true. But what’s really hard is that it’s not even obvious when it’ll be true, and when it won’t be. Madness.’
Traders say they can make millions by gaming Trump’s predictable pauses and delays on his tariff announcements after they cause a dip in the markets
Trump’s latest moves on his tariffs saw a continuation of his announce-then-backdown strategy as he admitted a ‘very nice call’ was enough to halt his levies on the European Union.
The president said a call from von der Leyen earlier this week led him to agree to extend his deadline for trade talks until July 9, because they needed more time to ‘reach a good deal.’
‘I received a call today from Ursula von der Leyen, President of the European Commission, requesting an extension on the June 1st deadline on the 50% Tariff with respect to Trade and the European Union,’ Trump revealed on Truth Social.
‘I agreed to the extension — July 9, 2025.
‘It was my privilege to do so. The Commission President said that talks will begin rapidly. Thank you for your attention to this matter.’
Trump threatened on Friday to intensify his trade war after expressing frustrations that trade talks were not moving quickly enough, saying he wanted steep new import taxes to start on June 1. The threat sent global stock markets plunging.
The president took to Truth Social on Friday morning to accuse the EU of being ‘very difficult to deal with’ and ‘taking advantage’ of the US.
But European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen urged him to delay the tariffs until July, which was the deadline he had originally set when he announced new tariffs in April.
