Trump’s TACO retreat betrays his complete lack of strategy: analysis

President Donald Trump once again walked back a major threat over the weekend, this time directed at Iran amid the ongoing war. While this latest retreat has "emboldened" belief in the "Trump Always Chickens Out" — or, TACO — trend, according to an analysis from Australia's ABC News, it also shows that he does not "fully comprehend" the weight of his own words.

With global oil prices continuing to skyrocket in the fallout of Trump's war, the president on Saturday threatened in a Truth Social post to "obliterate" Iranian power plants with military strikes if the Strait of Hormuz was not opened within 48 hours. With that end of the ultimatum approaching on Monday, ABC's Kathryn Diss wrote that Iran showed "no signs it would yield to the threat."

"In fact, Tehran was ready to escalate the fight, firing back with a threat of its own to hit Israel's power plants and those that supply US bases in the Gulf," she wrote in an analysis from Monday.

Diss noted that such a strike, and the inevitable retaliation from Iran, would have seen a dramatic escalation in the already disastrous war, likely deepening the global economic shock even more. In the face of such a scenario, Trump declared on Monday morning that the ultimatum had been postponed by five days following "productive" talks with Iranian leaders. Sources within Iran denied that such talk had taken place, claiming instead that Trump had "backed down."

This latest development reinforced what many in the financial world have called the "TACO" trend, which posits that Trump will always back down from major threats at the last minute to avert deeper economic consequences. While Diss acknowledged that trend, she also suggested that Trump was not fully aware of the gravity of his initial threat when he made it.

"As someone who tends to shoot from the hip, it is conceivable to imagine that Mr. Trump didn't fully comprehend the global impact his threat would have," Diss wrote. "Or perhaps he even thought that Iran would back down."

She continued: "The Hormuz crisis, which has crippled global energy markets, has become a key issue preventing Mr. Trump from ending the war. With global energy markets reeling, it's likely the president's advisors informed him that carrying through on the ultimatum could send markets spiralling further, causing global chaos. And this is something Donald Trump doesn't want."

After Trump announced the extension, markets swiftly rebounded, but Diss noted that his "yo-yo diplomacy does nothing to quell the worries of Iranians on the ground who are living in fear of what he might do next."

"This is not welcomed by people," one man inside Iran told the Australian outlet prior to Trump's Monday announcement. "People in major cities are so scared after hearing this threat by Trump, after knowing that such an attack on infrastructure would make their lives, their already-difficult lives, even more miserable."