Justin Wolfers: On Wall Street Right Now There Is a Trade Called the TACO Trade — Trump Always Chickens Out

EXCERPT:

WOLFERS: “There’s an asset here that really matters called American credibility. There was a time when the president opened his mouth, when you had to pay attention because you thought it meant something, that it was a shift in policy that other countries could rely on and respond to. That’s no longer the case. In fact, on Wall Street right now, and it’s one level funny and another level tragic. There’s a trade called the TACO trade, T-A-C-O, Trump Always Chickens Out. And the problem, of course, is that what we’re really not seeing is the businesses that aren’t being started. So, somewhere there’s an MBA student who just finished school who’s thinking about starting some sort of import-export business. There’s a factory that could be built, except for one of the most important imports we get from the European Union is precision machinery. And that either just went up 50 percent or went up 10 percent, but no one can be sure. And so, those are the stores and the businesses and the factories we’ll never see.”