President Donald Trump’s decision on Tuesday to accept a ceasefire in Iran — rather than follow through on his threats to escalate the war with massive, destructive attacks on Iranian civilians — is being met with what has become familiar: TACO.
Making strong threats has been a cornerstone of the Trump administration’s strategy. But, as many have noticed, he often doesn’t follow through on these threats. This led to the acronym TACO, or “Trump Always Chickens Out,” coined by Financial Times’ Robert Armstrong about Trump’s tax threats last year.
TACO became shorthand, especially among investors, to defy the conventional wisdom among liberals that Trump was a stuttering lunatic. “It’s an antidote to the misguided view that Trump is an authoritarian monster,” Armstrong wrote in December“instead of having the talent of a reality TV star without any political commitments worthy of the title.”
So TACO is a reading of Trump’s psychology. “I meant to point out the obvious fact that the president has little tolerance for political or economic pain,” Armstrong wrote. In other words, don’t worry too much about the president’s extreme words or impulses – because a negative market reaction, or a voice of unpopularity, will prompt him to back down quickly.
Viewed through one lens, Trump’s Iran ceasefire is the latest in a series of TACO examples. He threatened to end the whole civilization… but, knowing full-scale war would be unpopular and disruptive, he retreated and resume the conversation.
And yet – the TACO theory is also completely inconsistent with what happened in Iran. Trump started a war that lasted more than a month, killing many of the country’s leaders and hundreds of civiliansset the Middle East on fire, wreaking havoc on the world economy. It’s hard to point to the two-week ceasefire as proof that Trump is “always out” when he’s already gone too far, and done a lot of damage.
In fact, it points to the danger of TACO thinking: The theory can be a kind of coping mechanism, to convince people (and perhaps markets) in a disgruntled rejection of the damage that Trump can do.
It may be more helpful, then, to look beyond what we might call – apologetically – the “tough TACO” theory, which Trump always chicken out, and create a more narrow “soft TACO” theory instead.
Trump’s “soft TACO” theory is that, yes, he will often back down from the most serious threat he has made, or try to finally end the crisis he caused. But contrary to Armstrong’s claim that Trump has “little tolerance for political or economic pain,” his tolerance can sometimes be too high — even if not infinite. And it’s important to consider the actual damage he can do before deciding it’s time to step down.
Trump’s second term has been filled with radical moves from his administration, pushing the boundaries of presidential power in controversial and controversial ways.
But there is a pattern in which, sometimes, his actions lead to a backlash – political or economic – which he concludes is too great. So he’s trying to take things back at least somewhat. Examples include:
1. DOGE: Trump let Elon Musk run through the federal bureaucracy for about the first six weeks of this term, firing government workers and cutting contracts as he saw fit — at one point, even urged Musk to “GET MORE AGGRESSIVE.”
But after the chaos caused by Musk continued to dominate the headlines — and after Trump Cabinet officials pushed back on Musk’s power — Trump fired DOGE. early Marchsaying future cuts should be made with the approval of Cabinet secretaries and “‘scalpel’ instead of ‘hatchet.’
Changes stalled and Musk headed for the exits. But other Trump officials, like Office of Management and Budget director Russell Vought, have it continued to try and reform the federal bureaucracy – albeit in less headline-grabbing ways.
The level of damage will also be difficult for a future president to reverse: All organizations were effectively closed and the federal workforce shrank by 10 percent in Trump’s first year, and about 350,000 people fired, quit or retired. And there is no medicine for people in the poorest countries in the world he already suffered and died waiting for life-saving help from the programs that were removed in the Musk cleanup.
2. Day of Redemption: Trump surprised the world on April 2, 2025, by announcing “Liberation Day” tariffs for dozens of countries, set at levels that seemed to many to be. completely arbitrary and strange.
After a week of market turmoil, though, he blinked – announcing a 90-day “moratorium” on most of those high tariffs, to allow negotiations with target countries. This gave birth to the concept of “TACO”.
But this was not a complete descent. The The Budget Lab at Yale calculates that the effective daily tax rate was 2.3 percent when Trump took office — and is 11.05 percent now. That’s down from a post-Emancipation Day peak of 21 percent, but still well above pre-Trump levels, and hovered between 14 and 16 percent for much of last year before the Supreme Court. it prevailed some of Trump’s taxes are illegal. He is still seeking to introduce a new tax under a different legal authority.
3. Minneapolis: Beginning around June 2025, the Trump administration increased its mass deportation agenda by pursuing highly visible, militarized, and aggressive immigration legislation in specific cities — prompting and inviting violent confrontations with protesters in Los Angeles, Chicago, and Minneapolis.
But in Minneapolis this January, two Americans – Renée Good and Alex Pretti – were shot by immigration officers; The videos of the killing sparked outrage. The murder of Pretti has been seen as a particular flashpoint, especially when DHS officials he showed him falsely as an aggressor.
At that point, Trump decided he had had enough. He removed senior DHS officials from their positions (including, ultimately, Secretary Kristi Noem) He empowered non-extremist officials stop increasing enforcement in Minneapolis. More broadly, he seems to have abandoned the idea that immigration enforcement should be done through street battles in blue cities.
Trump’s descent here shows he wasn’t completely captivated by hard-line advisers or ideologies — and that he didn’t feel so detached from political consequences that he could ignore such strong opposition. But it took months – and two deaths – to bring him back. And he has not refrained from being expelled in large numbers; just him to do it more quietly.
Trump’s dangerous lesson
Whenever Trump backs away from one controversy of his own making, he stirs up another shortly thereafter.
Minneapolis was out of the headlines during Trump’s time met with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on February 11 to hear his views on attacking Iran. And he had smoked another TACO in Greenland a few weeks earlier, once again with reluctance to support only then did the markets begin to take his threats seriously.
According to a new report Jonathan Swan of the New York Times and Maggie HabermanTucker Carlson pleaded with Trump not to go ahead with the attack on Iran – but Trump told him “it will be fine,” adding, “because it always is.”
Trump seems to internalize the lesson that he can act to incite conflict — and always, ultimately, control things if they get out of hand. That is: that he can make a soft TACO, and it will be fine.
But the Iran war is proving the biggest test of that idea yet, largely because there’s another player involved this time can veto TACO and missiles, drones, and mines if they want, and they can have different pain thresholds. That’s a departure from his other self-inflicted conflicts and, regardless of how the battle ends, it’s an important demonstration of how one rash, binary decision can spiral out of control despite Trump’s intentions.
It is unclear whether the ceasefire will hold – some the attacks continued in the region on Wednesday morning. It will also be a major challenge to reach a lasting deal with Iran that meets Trump’s demands on nuclear materials, the Strait of Hormuz, and other issues. And if such a plan is not possible, might he be tempted to strike again?
Finally, the attacks and retaliation from Iran have done great damage to the world economy that will be seen for months or years. Trump’s soft TACO can change some of that — but it can’t fix everything that’s broken.
