The nasty Taco question

Katie Martin (0:06)

Pushkin. Listeners, exciting times. You'll never guess what happened. Unhedged is changing the world. One stupid joke at a time, maybe.

Yes, customers, we've made it all the way to the White House. Specifically, my podcast co-pilot, First Admiral Robert Armstrong, has made his presence felt at the very highest level of US politics. What am I on about? Has Rob been buying loads of crypto and going to dinner with the president? No, not as far as I know. No more than usual. But earlier this week, a reporter asked Mr. Donald J. Trump, leader of the free world, about the hottest new acronym on Wall Street, the taco trade. Trump always chickens out, coined by Rob himself. The president was not terribly amused. People, the taco has broken containment. It is running riot out in the wild. There are songs on the internet and everything. So today on the show, we're asking, oh man, what have we done? And now that tacos are out there, will they eat themselves? This is Unhedged, the markets and finance podcast and high level political influencing operation from the Financial Times and Pushkin. I'm Katie Martin, a markets columnist at the FT in London. And this week's main character in markets, Robert Armstrong himself, joins me down the line from the Unhedged newsletter base camp, TACO Central, in New York City.

Robert Armstrong (1:39)

I'm just hoping that this is not my last podcast that is not from a prison cell in El Salvador, some awful place like that, or perhaps Guantanamo Bay.

Katie Martin (1:50)

As you know, I've already been in touch with the producers to make sure that we can still broadcast it from El Salvador or whatever. But we have discussed the TACO trade on this podcast several times.

Robert Armstrong (2:03)

And I have, by the way, Katie, I have no idea how it got loose. I remember saying to you some weeks ago, maybe we can make this a thing and like trying slowly to make it a thing and having that not work at all.

Katie Martin (2:14)

Yeah, and then suddenly...

Robert Armstrong (2:16)

And then suddenly like it's in a New York Times headline and in the next day, it's in a White House press briefing. And I don't know how these things happen. The mysteries of social media and media in general are still completely hidden to me.

Katie Martin (2:31)

They are quite mysterious. We can talk about that a bit later. But okay, listeners who have been lucky enough to miss this whole completely ridiculous phenomenon. So you mentioned the TACO trade in one of your newsletters. I'm going to say two, three weeks ago.

Robert Armstrong (2:46)

Yes.

Katie Martin (2:47)

And then like, you know, very online finance people like me were like, lol, TACO trade, ha ha ha. And then it became a thing that was suddenly in notes from all the investment banks and all this sort of stuff.

Robert Armstrong (2:58)

Broker's notes.

Katie Martin (2:58)

And then a reporter asked Trump about how everyone on Wall Street is talking about the TACO trade, which they are.

SPEAKER_3 (3:07)

They're saying Trump always chickens out on your tariff threats, and that's why markets are higher this week.

Katie Martin (3:12)

What's your response to that?

Robert Armstrong (3:13)

I kick out? Oh, and then I chicken out.

Katie Martin (3:17)

I've never heard that. And his response? I'm going to say it rambled a little bit at the start, and we're going to spare you the full version, but let's just have a little listen to what he said.

SPEAKER_3 (3:27)

Don't ever say what you said. That's a nasty question. Go ahead. To me, that's the nastiest question.

Katie Martin (3:34)

You've annoyed the president.

Robert Armstrong (3:37)

Can I just say one very important thing, which is, obviously, I didn't expect this to happen, and the outcome I really, really hope does not happen is that this has anything to do with the president stopping his habitual chickening out. Let us state clearly, chickening out is good and something to be celebrated. Bad policy, chickening out, hooray. So this is an unintended consequences thing if, as I think is quite unlikely, by the way, given that I am an unimportant person and the president is an important person. If this gets into his head and he digs in his heels about some of this stuff, that is really a disaster for which I am very, very sorry.

Katie Martin (4:22)

Are you apologizing in advance?

Robert Armstrong (4:24)

Yes, I am apologizing in advance to the country and in particular, to the Mexican food industry, if this should have any bad consequences.