CHEETO

FROM TACO TO CHEETO: WHY THE GLOBAL ECONOMY NOW SMELLS LIKE REGRET AND POWDERED CORN

TACO — Trump Always Chickens Out — was less an economic theory and more a bedtime story for terrified investors. First introduced by Financial Times columnist Robert Armstrong earlier this year, it was an acronym born out of pure trauma-response. The idea was simple: Trump would bluster about tariffs, send markets into a tailspin, and then—just before real consequences could land—he’d flinch, backtrack, or forget what he was doing altogether. Traders treated it like clockwork. Stocks dip? Buy the TACO. He’ll fold by Friday and call it “the most beautiful deal anyone’s ever seen, maybe ever.”

It wasn’t optimism. It was pattern recognition. And for a time, it worked. Wall Street got rich betting on the inevitability of Trump’s cowardice. But what no one accounted for was what would happen when he stopped chickening out—and started believing his own bullshit. That’s when the TACO trade stopped being safe. And that’s when we entered the CHEETO era.

CHEETO: A NEW ACRONYM FOR A THE ECONOMIC LEXICON

TACO was the appetizer. CHEETO is the full meal: flaming, chaotic, and impossible to digest. It stands for many things, none of them good:

Corporate Huckster Escalating Economic Tension Overseas

Chaotic Handling Erodes Every Trade Opportunity

Constantly Hypes Emergencies, Exploiting Tariffs Opportunistically

Crashes Hope, Exploits Everyone, Trump Overcompensates

Chokes Hiring, Escalates Errors, Trump Oblivious

In short, CHEETO is Trump’s post-TACO form—his final snack evolution—when he stops bluffing and starts launching economic Molotovs just to see who burns. It’s when policy gets replaced by dopamine. When governance becomes a series of tariffs written in Sharpie. It’s not a strategy. It’s a symptom. And now, the global economy is coated in orange dust and wondering if there’s an EpiPen for this kind of allergic reaction.

THE CHEETO EFFECT: UNHINGED, UNCHECKED, UNFORGIVABLE

CHEETO isn’t about trade imbalances. It’s about imbalance, full stop. This is what happens when the president thinks foreign policy is a piñata and every press conference is a chance to throw candy at the wall and scream “AMERICA FIRST!” into a bullhorn.

Canada? Hit with 35% tariffs on “fentanyl-adjacent goods,” a category so vague it might include hockey pucks, shampoo, or universal healthcare. India? Slammed with 25% for “e-commerce betrayal,” because apparently the real crime is having a functioning checkout page. Germany? Just existing with competence was enough to earn economic whiplash and a warning from Trump that “cars are sneaky.” And China? They’re just watching from the sidelines, sipping tea made of U.S. Treasury bonds and schadenfreude.

Every country is now a target. There is no rhyme, no reason, just pure CHEETO chaos—sprayed indiscriminately across global markets like an angry toddler with a Cheez Whiz flamethrower.

AMERICA UNDER CHEETO RULE: THE SNACK THAT EATS YOU BACK

Domestically, the CHEETO strategy is leaving claw marks. Prices are spiking, exports are flailing, and small businesses are hanging by a thread made of expired PPE loans and existential dread. There’s no continuity. No logic. Just sudden tariff announcements screamed at reporters like they’re substitute teachers. One day it’s “beautiful reciprocal fairness,” the next it’s “we’re punishing Denmark for windmill sabotage.”

The Fed has entered its flop era, pacing like a raccoon in a trap while the Treasury Secretary explains why cheese tariffs are now a national security issue. Economists aren’t modeling behavior anymore. They’re modeling weather patterns—because that’s how unpredictable the White House has become. The markets are whiplashed, the public is confused, and the only person who seems to think this is going great is the orange menace occupying the Oval Office.

THE TRUTH ABOUT CHEETO: THIS IS A CRISIS IN A COSTUME

Let’s be clear: CHEETO is not an accident. It is not random. It is not “just Trump being Trump.” It is a full-blown doctrine of weaponized instability. A chaos engine fueled by insecurity, short attention spans, and an obsession with domination. Trump isn’t negotiating—he’s emotionally disassociating with legislative consequences. He’s addicted to the boom-bust cycle because every crash makes him feel like the only adult in the room, even as he’s setting the drapes on fire.

The TACO effect allowed us to believe that bluster was harmless. CHEETO strips away that illusion and forces us to watch a man detonate global trust for applause. There is no method to this madness. Only madness, dressed up as machismo, then rolled in Cheeto dust and broadcast on every network with a flag graphic behind it.

FINAL CRUNCH: THIS ACRONYM IS NOT A JOKE

We didn’t make up CHEETO to be funny. We made it up because someone needed to name the monster. Because this isn't normal. It’s not business as usual. It’s not just “tariff policy.” It’s a pattern of erratic, hostile, ego-driven disruption so consistent and corrosive that it deserves its own acronym. Now it has one.

So remember it. Burn it in your brain. Because the next time markets crash, trade collapses, and some smirking pundit says, “We’ve never seen anything like this,” you can tell them they have. They just didn’t call it by its real name:

CHEETO.

And it’s not leaving until every institution is covered in dust and every economy has choked on it.

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