“I chicken out? Oh, I’ve never heard that,” Trump said, before denying that he had ever backed down.

The US president announced large international tariffs on his flagship “liberation day” last month, which caused the steepest collapse in global stock markets since the pandemic. The 145 per cent tariffs imposed on China have since been reduced to 30 per cent.

Last week, markets across Europe and the US nosedived again after Trump vowed to impose a 50 per cent blanket tariff on imported goods from the European Union from June 1.

Trump announced on Sunday that the tariffs would be delayed until July 9 after the EU had agreed to speed up negotiations, and the losses were quickly reversed when US markets opened after the long Memorial Day weekend.

“I gave the European Union a 50 per cent tax tariff, and they called up and they said ‘please let’s meet right now’,” Trump said on Wednesday at the White House.

“After I did what I did they said ‘we’ll meet any time you want’. You call that chickening out?”

“It’s called negotiation,” he added, before suggesting that his tactics included setting “a ridiculous high number” for tariff rates and going down when he gets other countries to cave in to his demands.

He told the reporter: “Don’t ever say what you said, that’s a nasty question.”

The Taco acronym was coined this month by the Financial Times commentator Robert Armstrong, and has since been adopted as shorthand by investment bankers and analysts as Trump continues to flip flop on tariffs.

“The recent rally has a lot to do with markets realising that the US administration does not have a very high tolerance for market and economic pressure, and will be quick to back off when tariffs cause pain,” Armstrong wrote. “This is the Taco theory: Trump Always Chickens Out.”

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President Snowflake Has On Camera Meltdown Over Internet Meme