US President Donald Trump rejected the idea that he "chickened out" by setting devastatingly high tariffs and then reversing them, UNN reports, citing AP.
"That's called negotiations, you set a figure," Trump said, adding that the reporter's question was "disgusting."
The question was a reference to what is known as "TACO trading," a term coined by Robert Armstrong of the Financial Times, which stands for "Trump Always Chickens Out." The idea is that Trump scares the markets with his tariff hikes and then retreats, forcing the markets to recover.
Trump defended his approach to raising tariff rates to 145% on Chinese goods, only to then lower them to 30% for 90 days of negotiations. He said this approach has led to $14 trillion in new investment in the US, a figure that appears to be artificially inflated and has not been fully confirmed in any economic statistics.
"Never say what you said," Trump said, referring to the question of whether he chickened out.