New Acronyms Poking Fun at Trump's Trade Policies
- Editor OGN Daily
- 2 days ago
- 2 min read
President Donald Trump might be known for his snappy acronyms, but now investors are using four-letter descriptors of their own to ridicule Trump's trade policies.
Investors on Wall Street and elsewhere have concocted a handful of abbreviations to neatly summarise Trump’s trade policies. Such as:
TACO: It's short for “Trump Always Chickens Out” and is a term coined by Financial Times columnist Robert Armstrong to describe the president’s pattern of implementing trade policy threats that are likely to cause the market to tumble before he inevitably reverses (either fully or partially) that policy, leading to a market rebound. For example, his so-called “Liberation Day” tariffs caused the markets to hit historic lows before he ordered a 90-day pause one week later, leading to record highs.
MEGA: Viktor Orbán, the Hungarian Prime Minister and Trump ally, co-opted Trump’s MAGA slogan last year, but added a European spin to it: “Make Europe Great Again.” Now, investors have given the phrase yet another meaning. European stocks have outperformed their American counterparts as economic uncertainty reigns in the U.S., prompting some investors to choose to put their money in European companies rather than American.
"It seems that MEGA trades are now rapidly replacing MAGA trades, which have lost their appeal," Mark Dowding, CIO at RBC's BlueBay fixed income team, told Reuters.
FAFO: Trump was actually the first to use this acronym. It stands for “F*** around and find out.” It’s usually used to mean there will be consequences to one’s actions. For example, after Columbia blocked the U.S.’s deportation flights earlier this year, Trump posted a moody AI-generated image of himself wearing a fedora next to a sign reading: “FAFO.” After the president threatened hefty levies, Columbia reversed course, prompting the Times of London to dub the exchange a “FAFO diplomacy.”
Reuters also reports that some investors are also using FAFO to describe market turbulence caused by Trump’s erratic trade policies. Mark Spindel, chief investment officer of Potomac River Capital LLC, likened the stock market to being caught in a "pinball machine as a result of that policymaking process."
MAGA: This is a variation on the "Make America Great Again" slogan that Trump has been touting for years, but is now being used by some investors to mean “Make America Go Away.” A Canadian investor says the quip is doing the rounds of trading desks in Toronto and Montreal, with many longingly thinking about simply boycotting U.S investment.
