Mexico gets a mouthful of TACO Don
President Donald Trump announced on Thursday that he had once again failed to negotiate a trade deal with Mexico and has extended the current level of 25% tariffs for another 90 days.
The decision showed Trump living up to the derisive nickname of TACO, which stands for Trump Always Chickens Out. The acronym has been used by Wall Street traders as a guideline for making investments based on Trump’s inability to follow up on his grand pronouncements.
On his social media account, Trump tried to portray the latest failure in a more positive light. “The complexities of a Deal with Mexico are somewhat different than other Nations because of both the problems, and assets, of the Border,” Trump wrote. “We have agreed to extend, for a 90 Day period, the exact same Deal as we had for the last short period of time.”
The announcement was the second time Trump has blinked and granted Mexico an extension, following his previous retreat in April. Without an extension, Trump had said he would impose a 50% tariff on goods imported from Mexico, effectively triggering a massive tax hike for consumers. Mexico is the United States’ biggest trading partner and Americans purchase billions in goods from that nation.
Trump tried to portray a phone call between himself and Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum as “successful,” despite his diplomatic retreat and failure. Sheinbaum has previously shown that, like most world leaders, she is not intimidated by Trump’s bravado, mocking him before he even took office when he began pushing to inaccurately label the Gulf of Mexico as the “Gulf of America.”
Trump has desperately tried to portray himself as a master negotiator and practitioner of the “Art of the Deal,” but has come up limp in the real world. Instead, the Mexico announcement showed Trump once again adhering to TACO, even as his actions continue to bring uncertainty to global economics.
Even when Trump does reach an agreement with trading partners—like he did with the European Union over the weekend—it is consumers who suffer as tariffs spike from their previous levels and are passed on as extra charges to consumers. Those actions lead to price hikes for vital goods like medication, even as Trump pretends he has secured victories.
Meanwhile, inflation is spiking as Trump’s tariffs settle in. The entire tariff argument is unraveling, and Trump cannot hold his ground.