Latest news with #TACO
News18
3 hours ago
- Business
- News18
TACO Trade: Wall Street Has A New Acronym To Rally Behind, But Donald Trump Thinks It's "Nasty"
Financial Times columnist Robert Armstrong coined a new terminology for US President Donald Trump - TACO or Trump Always Chickens Out. The new term describes how Trump's tariff policies rattled global markets, created a wave of uncertainty, and were eventually termed by a US trade court as illegal, paving the way for a prolonged court battle. Armstrong mentioned that Trump has a habit of announcing a new tariff policy, which takes the markets lower, and then backs out of those, leading to a rebound in the markets, and hence the TACO terminology. n18oc_world n18oc_crux
Buzz Feed
4 hours ago
- Politics
- Buzz Feed
Best Political Tweets 5-30-2025
American politics is chaos right now, but I find it comforting to know I'm not alone in thinking the world has gone bananas. So, here are 24 of the best, most relatable, and sometimes funny political tweets from the last week: TACO stands for Trump Always Chickens Out. See you next week!
Forbes
4 hours ago
- Business
- Forbes
Leadership Lessons From Trump's Latest TACO Moment
View of a taco with lettuce and tomatos on a black background, January 1989. (Photo by Tom ...) Trump's new TACO nickname is an acronym for 'Trump Always Chickens Out." It is back in the news today following Donald Trump decision to change course on his opposition to Nippon Steel's acquisition to US Steel. Trump's previous policy changes on tariffs, the Russian War on Ukraine, and deficit reduction, have led commentators to call him the TACO President. Today, I met with a corporate chief executive wrestling with how to mobilize his company into a new era of growth. His story connects with Trump's because they are both seeking to manage change. They both have a bold vision and face a choice: should I make definitive declarations or move in small increments, gauging progress based on what you learn and what works? The big bold actions and the small, learning steps, are different leadership strategies. Trump's TACO moniker. Trump's second presidency has been defined by a series of bold policy steps. Support or oppose his politics, it is impossible to deny that Trump represents a radical shift in the ideology governing the United States. He has launched some of them with great theatre, such as the 'Independence Day' announcement of his massive tariffs on almost every country in the world. These tactics are calculated to draw maximum attention for his actions in the hope of garnering support from the country. The challenge for Trump is that these actions are very specific – tariffs of a certain percentage, commitments to end a war within a specific timeframe, opposition to a named takeover deal by a foreign company. These are all positions or policies where we can measure whether or not he acted as he claimed that he would. He either holds the line on these specific choices or he reverses course. The apparent reversal in his positions is what has led to the 'TACO President' label. The 'Trump Always Chickens Out' syndrome is precisely what I want my CEO to avoid as he launches his effort to transform his company. He too has a major change challenge to manage, taking a successful profitable firm to a new level in the face of serious threats from technological disruption. My CEO is operating on a dramatically smaller scale. Nevertheless, he is still seeking to set a scale of ambition that is equal to the challenge and shake people out of their comfort zone. He wants to help the firm shift gear and find a path to growth that realizes its full potential. Today the team he leads is focused on operational and regulatory pressures which, though important, will not secure the firm's long-term path to growth. This is a radical break for a firm that has been run for operational performance for twenty years. It has neglected its back-office infrastructure and not invested in its people in a way that would enable it to achieve higher levels of performance. It has big opportunities and, with the new CEO a positive thesis for growth. My CEO could make a bold leap by announcing that he is breaking with the past and developing a new business model. There are plenty of players in adjacencies with direct-to-consumer digital or AI enabled businesses. The CEO's company is bricks and mortar with mostly analog systems. The CEO could go big with a vision to turn the company upside down and make it digital only. This 'burn the boats to the past' could play well with growth investors eager for evidence of radical action to bend the growth curve. This would signal a new paradigm for the business with the hope of scaring the legacy managers into action. However, success would depend on the actions the CEO announces being right. What if consumers don't want to buy direct? What if existing customers flock to competitors fearful that they are about to be left behind? What if the talent his current business depends on run for greener pastures in fear for their jobs? It's a simple answer: he would need to reverse course quickly to preserve revenue and sustain the business. He would be a TACO leader too. The challenge of the bold, decisive approach to leadership is that you better get it right. Otherwise, you may find yourself backtracking to correct errors. I am all in favor of ambition. When faced with an opportunity to lead disruption, the best option is to set a new scale of ambition. This resets a team's expectations for what they need to deliver and frees them to think on a new scale. However, if your ambition includes lots of specific actions that you are going to take, you run the risk of getting it wrong. The challenges that Trump faces are super complex. The USA has a massive (this is an understatement) budget deficit that is funded by global investors, including many from Japan and China. Any action on tariffs affects their willingness to buy this debt and so fund the future of the American government. This is a complex interplay between multiple factors. Trump's actions may have a positive impact on the problem. However, the scale of these choices is unprecedented and the outcomes unknown. He has already learned that the bond-market creates a constraint on his actions, which is what caused him to 'chicken out' from imposing his massive tariffs. The alternative to bold action with specifics, which you later need to reverse, is to commit to a strategy of learning. You still need a bold ambition, a sense of the long-term outcome that you are seeking to create. But, instead of a preset playbook, you have a set of mini actions, each of which are designed to teach you what works, so that you can adapt and respond. This learning approach is far more successful for operating in complex environments. The OODA Loop is a good example of a decision-model for complex scenarios. OODA describes a four-stage process of observing, orienting, deciding, and acting. Developed by US Air Force Colonel John Boyd, it is still taught in the military as a way of managing situations with a high-level of uncertainty. My advice to the CEO was to define a long-term ambition together with a broad roadmap for how to get there. This will provide his team with some guard rails but leave them in charge of designing actions to get them to the future, taking small steps to learn, then scaling the ones that work. The paradox of TACO leadership is that in the long-run it exposes the leader to charges of weak leadership. The constant change of direction implies a lack of understanding and judgement, but more critically it also suggests that he lacks the courage of his own convictions. A more confident leadership stance is to paint the bold vision, but to move carefully, learning in increments, and moving in concert with those around you toward a change that is sustainable and effective. Otherwise, you end up making bold, but ultimately foolish moves that you need to reverse and being called TACO is your reward.
Yahoo
4 hours ago
- General
- Yahoo
Fact Check: Fake footage of massive 'TACO' skywriting over Mar-a-Lago likely AI-generated
Claim: Authentic footage from May 2025 depicts the word "TACO" spelled out in the sky above Trump's Florida residence, Mar-a-Lago. Rating: On May 29, 2025, footage allegedly showing the word "TACO" spelled out in contrail vapor above U.S. President Donald Trump's residence in Florida, Mar-a-Lago, circulated the internet. The video spread across multiple platforms, including X (archived), TikTok (archived), Facebook (archived), Instagram Threads (archived) and YouTube. The first post of the video (archived) appeared on X account @SkylineReport, where it garnered more than 1 million views, as of this writing. We were unable to reach the account's owner for comment. Investors began popularizing the term "TACO" ("Trump Always Chickens Out") to characterize claims that whenever Trump faces a market backlash, he will back down. Although several users in the comments appeared to believe that the video was authentic, the footage was fake — and likely AI-generated. First, Google search results of the terms "Trump," "Taco," and "above 'Mar-a-Lago'" yielded no results pertaining to the footage from any reputable news outlet. The results only related to Trump's response to reporters' questions about the term as well as unverified social media posts of the video or similar claims in question. ( Second, there were indications in the video itself of AI-generation. Jet engine vapor trails form letters out of condensation, but an aircraft does not appear in the video until the very end, when it spontaneously appears next to the letter "O" approximately four seconds into the video. If the video were authentic, the aircraft would be visible throughout the video. The video shows dozens of people on the ground beneath the letters. If the footage were authentic, individual social media users would have posted their own footage. Rather, the only footage on the internet is from one angle. The fake footage also depicts a distinctly long building beneath the letters supposedly on the Mar-a-Lago property, but Google Earth imagery of Mar-a-Lago does not appear to show any such building. (Google Earth) Lastly, we ran a screenshot of the video through AI-detection software Hive, and the results were 99.9% likely to be AI-generated. ( Fact Check: FAKE Video Shows 'TACO' in the Sky Over Mar-a-Lago | Lead Stories. 30 May 2025, Accessed 30 May 2025. Jolly, Jasper. '"Trump Always Chickens out": Taco Jibe Ruffles President's Feathers'. The Guardian, 29 May 2025. The Guardian,
Yahoo
6 hours ago
- Business
- Yahoo
Trump irritated that his team didn't tell him about ‘TACO,' sources say
There was a reason for President Donald Trump's particularly scathing response when a reporter asked him Wednesday about a new term coined about the president's tariffs: TACO, or Trump Always Chickens Out. He had not yet heard the term, according to a senior White House official who acknowledged to CNN that the president was caught off guard. Trump had said as much at the time, saying 'I've never heard that' before calling it the 'nastiest question.' 'He thought the reporter was calling him a chicken,' the official said, adding that Trump was 'reasonably' frustrated with the phrase. The acronym was coined in early May by a Financial Times columnist and is now used as shorthand by some on Wall Street to indicate that traders shouldn't fret too much about Trump's tariff threats, since he usually backs down. Trump also vented his frustrations to his team following the exchange, sources familiar with the matter said. He was not only irked by the term itself but also by his team's failure to tell him about the phrase gaining traction. It's a window into what may offend Trump the most: He took clear umbrage with the idea that people perceive his tariff adjustments as weakness. Trump's real-time response also demonstrated his view that the shorthand diminished what he sees as an essential negotiating tactic on trade. He explained on Wednesday that sometimes he sets 'a ridiculous high number' for tariff rates and then relents if other nations give in to his demands. 'It clearly bothered him, primarily because it demonstrated a lack of understanding about how he actually utilizes those threats for leverage,' said one person familiar with the matter. 'But obviously he's not a guy who looks kindly on weakness, so the idea anyone would think that with respect to his actions isn't received well.' Trump, in just the last week, has threatened 50% tariffs on the European Union, then extended the deadline in return for more concrete talks and has threatened to re-escalate his China trade war in an effort to secure compliance with last month's agreement. Last month, he also imposed a 145% tariff on imported Chinese goods, before bringing that back down to 30% this month. The TACO acronym's journey to the Oval Office is, in and of itself, a telling narrative about the current information environment. It originated with a May 2 column from Robert Armstrong, a Financial Times commentator and author of the publication's popular finance newsletter 'Unhedged.' Armstrong coined the phrase as a way of capturing Trump's frequent willingness to walk back, pause or provide carve outs from his most expansive tariff threats. The idea, in short, is that Trump's threats had created a pattern of driving stocks down, only to see them surge when he changed course weeks later. He used the term to try and explain the steady upward trajectory taking place in late April, which he wrote had 'a lot to do with markets realizing that the U.S. administration does not have a very high tolerance for market and economic pressure, and will be quick to back off when tariffs cause pain. This is the TACO theory: Trump Always Chickens Out.' The acronym became something of a running joke on finance Twitter, the informative and generally good-humored corner of X where financial commentators and analysts debate the day's most interesting, market moving or, at times, arcane topics. Within a few weeks, the TACO trade had become a fixture of Wall Street chatter and started appearing in client notes from financial analysts and economists. The rapid acceleration of the acronym's role in finance lexicon caught Armstrong, who has been sharply critical of the economic merits of Trump's tariffs, by surprise. 'The mysteries of social media and media in general are still completely hidden to me,' Armstrong said on the FT's 'Unhedged' podcast. 'The outcome I really, really hope does not happen is that this has anything to do with the president stopping his habitual chickening out,' Armstrong added. 'Let us state clearly, chickening out is good and something to be celebrated. Bad policy chickening out — hooray.' Trump made it clear to the reporter on Wednesday that he preferred a different description. 'You call that chickening out?' Trump asked. 'It's called negotiation.' Kylie Atwood contributed to this report.
