For those unaware, the "TACO trade" is when Wall Street investors trade based on the principle that "Trump Always Chickens Out". For example, buying in a tariff-induced dip on the principle that he'll probably repeal the tariffs.
Now that someone's said to Trump's face that Wall Street thinks he always chickens out, he may or may not stop doing it.
> Now that someone's said to Trump's face that Wall Street thinks he always chickens out, he may or may not stop doing it
The point is he’s powerless not to. The alternative is allowing a bond rout to trigger a bank collapse, probably in rural America. He didn’t do the prep that produces actual leverage. (Xi did.)
This was the most interesting thing I found during the past few weeks - even “The US President is the most powerful man in the world” can’t win a war against the bond market.
> even “The US President is the most powerful man in the world” can’t win a war against the bond market
"You will not find it difficult to prove that battles, campaigns, and even wars have been won or lost primarily because of logistics" (D. D. Eisenhower).
Trump did zero preparation for this trade war. It's still unclear what the ends are, with opposing and contradictory aims being messaged. We launched the war simultaneously against everyone. The formula used to calculate tariffs doesn't make sense. And Trump decided to blow out the deficit and kneecap U.S. state capacity at the same time he's negotiating against himself on trade.
The U.S. President can take on the bond market. Most simply by taking the budget into surplus, thereby threatening its existence. But Trump didn't do that. He didn't even pretend he was going to do that. Instead, he's strategically put himself in a position where he has to chicken out, and it honestly seems like he's surrounded himself with people who are too high, drunk and/or stupid to see that. He's the poker player who shows up at the table, goes all in, looks at his cards and folds in one move.
There's no end - it's just Trump following his learned or innate behaviour.
Same behaviour that bankrupted every institution he's ever been in charge of before. The definition of insanity is doing the same thing again and expecting different results.
It's possible he'll stop chickening out to win his internal argument against that reporter who said he always chickens out. Feeling like he's winning seems to be important to him and he holds grudges for a long time. In that case the American economy goes bye bye.
We already know he wants to end the dollar reserve currency status, because he said so - trade deficit and reserve currency status are different words for the same thing.
Trump has never been good enough for the financial structures he has been finagled into the top position of.
So many dumpster fires but only a few official bankruptcies, well that's always what's on the table and anything goes.
Back in the 20th century almost everybody knew that Trump was not trustworthy, especially not with money, give me a break, that's what made him such a tragic/comic character.
It's almost like people forget with any org where he is the ultimate decision-maker, if there is challenging debt with no quick way out, he is more likely than most to declare bankruptcy. Otherwise it would require acumen he has never had to right a faltering ship. Plus he would be bogged down when he wanted to shift his focus to schemes that were more promising to him personally. Like other pie-in-the-sky deals back then, or something like his memecoin today. So many times in different orgs with different/leading personalities it's only a declaration away anyhow. Not normally on the menu for the best of the real decent businessmen, but what do you do when you get one that's far from the best and not even decent?
If there were some deep insight into his personal financial situation over the years, especially recently, there might be a more accurate picture whether he would be inclined to "one day" just decide to declare the whole USA bankrupt and move on to greener pastures himself. Or if the decision has already been made, who knew? Or would believe it yet anyway?
Any President could always have made more money doing something else, the whole time it's only been a matter of integrity, or lack thereof.
Can you expand on "probably in rural America"? Do you just mean that those smaller community banks are more at risk if rates rise? If so, because they issue more variable rate debt? Or is there something else?
> Do you just mean that those smaller community banks are more at risk if rates rise? If so, because they issue more variable rate debt? Or is there something else?
Current issue is community banks have 3x the commercial real estate exposure of other banks [1]. They're also less liquid and have a lower ROA. So in cases where the shock comes from outside the financial sector, they tend to be the first we worry about.
yeah, I thought the same thing. Steel tariff announcement is the first real test.
Announcing the US Steel merger? / purchase? at the same time I think is part of the plan. I think he is going to stick this one out to prove them wrong. Would be interesting to see if TACO is even real, I could see someone on wall street opening a ton of puts, making the story up and then leaking the fake story to the reporter.
Now that someone's said to Trump's face that Wall Street thinks he always chickens out, he may or may not stop doing it.