The US president was asked about the new acronym that’s been coined to mock his trade policies amid high tariff rates on other nations, but he was not impressed
Donald Trump has vehemently slammed the new acronym – TACO – that’s been devised to ridicule his trade policies amid elevated tariff rates on other countries.
At a press briefing today, Trump faced questions about the TACO trade, a term coined by The Financial Times’ Robert Armstrong, which stands for “Trump Always Chickens Out,” following recent market upheavals.
When a journalist mentioned the term, an incensed Trump retorted: “You mean because I reduced China from 145% that I set, down to 100, and then down to another number, and I said you have to open up your whole country.”
Last week, Trump hinted he might levy a 50% tax on goods from the European Union starting in June but postponed the tariff increase until July 9, allowing time for discussions while keeping the standard 10% tariff in place.
“After I did what I did they said ‘we’ll meet any time you want’ and ‘we have an end date of July 9th,’ you call that chickening-out?”, reports the Irish Star.
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Trump then boasted about America being the “hottest country in the world” and castigated the reporter who asked the question.
“You know, we have the hottest country anywhere in the world. I went to Saudi Arabia, the king told me, he said ‘we have the hottest country in the world right now’,” Trump proclaimed.
“Six months ago this country was stone cold dead. We had a dead country. We had a country people didn’t think was going to survive and you ask a nasty question like that.”
Trump defended his tactics, which some detractors have branded as “chickening out,” by claiming it is simply an astute manoeuvre in negotiations, pointing to China as a prime example.
Trump reiterated his strategy of escalating Chinese product tariffs to an unprecedented 145% before lowering them to 30% to begin a 90-day negotiation period.
“I said ‘where are we now?’ We’re at 145%, I said ‘woo, that’s high, that’s high’…we were basically going cold turkey with China, we were doing no business, because of the tariff, because it was so high,” Trump asserted.
He proceeded to berate the journalist who had the audacity to ask the question.
“But don’t ever say what you said, that’s a nasty question, to me, that’s the nastiest question,” Trump fumed.
Trump then claimed that without the daunting 50% tariff he imposed, EU officials would not even entertain negotiations, despite often facing criticism for being “too tough.”