President Trump snapped at a CNBC reporter on Wednesday after being asked about tariffs.
“Mr. President, Wall Street analysts are calling your trade policy the ‘TACO trade’ — Trump Always Chickens Out. What’s your response?” asked CNBC’s Megan Casella in the Oval Office.
Trump didn’t hold back. “Oh, isn’t that nice. ‘Chicken out.’ I’ve never heard that,” he said. Then he defended his deals.
He pointed to China’s tariffs being slashed from 145% and said he demanded they “open your whole country.” He also mentioned hitting the EU with a 50% tariff. “They called up… ‘Please, let’s meet right now.’”
Trump said the European Union came crawling after he issued the tariff threat. He said they now had an end date of July 9 for a deal. “You call that chickening out?” he fired back.
He compared it all to the Biden era. “We had a dead country. People didn’t think it was going to survive,” he said. “And you ask a nasty question like that?”
Trump insisted lowering tariffs was just part of the negotiation. “Don’t ever say what you said,” he scolded Casella. “That’s the nastiest question.”
Casella later laughed about it on CNBC, calling it a “badge of honor.” “He did not like this question, I can tell you,” she said.
Trump had announced broad new tariffs in April. But earlier this month, he paused everything but China tariffs until July — a move he said was to get better deals.