Donald Trump Fumes At Reporter For Asking About Wall Street’s Notion That He Always “Chickens Out” On Tariffs

UPDATED: Donald Trump once again got testy with a reporter over a question, this time over a phrase being used on Wall Street over the president’s tendency to not follow through on tariff threats: the TACO trade, as in “Trump Always Chickens Out.”

The reporter, Megan Casella of CNBC, noted that analysts have used the term, and it explains why markets have been higher this week. “What’s your response to that?” she asked Trump.

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“I kick out?” Trump asked.

“Chicken out,” Casella repeated.

“I’ve never heard that,” Trump said, before arguing that his tariff policy has brought China and the European Union to the negotiating table.

He then told Casella, “You ask a nasty question like that. It’s called negotiation. You set a number… if I set a number at a ridiculous high, I go down a little bit, they want me to hold that number. 145% tariff.” Trump said that “we were doing no business because of the tariff, because it was so high. I knew that. But don’t ever say what you said. That’s a nasty question.”

Wall Street markets gyrated as trade between the U.S. and China came to a standstill. But after negotiations earlier this month, the U.S. lowered the tariff, at least for 90 days, to 30%, while China dropped its reciprocal tariff to 10%.

Trump was speaking to pool reporters in the Oval Office after a swearing in ceremony of Jeanine Pirro as the new interim U.S. attorney for the District of Columbia.

Casella later said on CNBC that “Wall Street loves an acronym,” and “the idea here is just that yes, the markets will go down when he makes a threat, only to rebound, often even higher, once the threat is off the table.” As for Trump calling her question “nasty,” Casella said it was “a badge of honor, I guess.”

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