Trump Lashes Out at 'Nastiest Question'

President Trump isn't happy about a term coined by Financial Times reporter Robert Armstrong for markets' reaction to his tariffs: TACO, standing for "Trump always chickens out." Trump was clearly irritated when a reporter asked him about the term on Wednesday. "I've never heard that. 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?" the president said, per the Hill. "And because I gave the European Union a 50% tariff and they called up and said, 'Please let's meet right now,'" he added. "You call that chickening out?"

"It's called negotiation," Trump said, explaining that he sets a "ridiculous high number and I go down a little bit, you know, a little bit" if other countries agree to his demands. "Don't ever say what you say, that's a nasty question," Trump told the reporter who asked him about the acronym, per CNN. "To me that's the nastiest question." Earlier this month, Armstrong wrote that the TACO theory explained why stocks were rallying despite Trump's tariff threats, with markets realizing "that the US administration does not have a very high tolerance for market and economic pressure, and will be quick to back off when tariffs cause pain." (More President Trump stories.)