President Donald Trump launched into a spirited defense of his trade policy after being asked about the acronym “TACO”—short for “Trump Always Chickens Out”—a jab some critics use to describe his handling of tariffs, particularly toward China and the European Union.
“Don’t ever say what you said,” Trump shot back, calling the question “nasty.” He rejected the notion that his tariff approach signaled retreat, instead framing it as strategic brinkmanship. “It’s called negotiation,” he said. “You set a number… if I set a ridiculous high number, I go down a little bit, you know, a little bit.”
Trump cited his initial imposition of a 145% tariff on China—an unusually high figure that he later claimed was reduced to “another number”—as an example of leverage in action. He argued the tactic brought countries like China and members of the European Union to the negotiating table. “They said, ‘Please, let’s meet right now,’” Trump said, referring to EU officials. “And I said, okay, I’ll give you till July.”
He also linked his tariff policies to what he described as a revitalized American economy. “Six months ago, this country was stone cold, dead,” Trump claimed. “We had a dead country… now we have $14 trillion invested, committed to investing.”
At one point, Trump drifted into geopolitical anecdotes, recalling a conversation with the Saudi king: “The king told me… we have the hottest country in the world right now.”
Though often criticized for inconsistency in trade policy, Trump remains adamant that his tariff threats were not signs of retreat but rather tools of hard-nosed diplomacy. “You call that chickening out?” he asked. “We were doing no business whatsoever [with China]… but I knew that.”
