Trump’s Latest Tariff TACO Won’t Make Your Life More Affordable, No Matter What the White House Says

When the Trump administration rushed out yet another tariff exemption on Friday,  this time carving out coffee, beef, bananas, and a handful of other agricultural imports, it was easy to miss the bigger picture. Yes, some prices might fall a little. Yes, the White House is spinning this as proof that “affordability” is finally on the agenda. But the truth is simpler, and less flattering: this is just the latest installment of TACO — “Trump Always Chickens Out” — the pattern traders use to describe Donald Trump’s habit of walking back his own economic policies once the real-world consequences hit home.

And this latest TACO doesn’t solve anything.

According to CNN’s reporting on Friday’s move (source), Trump exempted several agricultural products from the so-called “reciprocal” tariffs his administration began rolling out in April. Prices for foods like bananas have risen roughly 8% since the start of Trump’s second term, CNN notes, and even the administration’s own people admit consumers probably won’t see meaningful relief.

US Trade Representative Jamieson Greer told CNBC that lower tariffs may only affect prices “depending on what importers do,” adding that tariff policy hasn’t been the main driver of inflation anyway.

So why make a big show of walking back tariffs that barely worked in the first place? Simple: the politics of affordability are clobbering Republicans. As CNN points out, voters frustrated by rising costs already handed the GOP major losses in recent off-year elections.

Tariff theatrics won’t change that.

The Banana Example Tells the Real Story

Economists interviewed by CNN are skeptical that consumers will feel much change. Sarah House of Wells Fargo explains that while tariff removal “could” push banana prices back to earlier levels.

And even that may be optimistic.

Paul Donovan, chief economist at UBS Global Wealth Management, told CNN that the import price of bananas has actually fallen since tariffs were imposed, but consumer prices still went up. Retailers simply pocketed the difference. 

This is the heart of the problem: tariffs distort supply chains, and reversing them doesn’t unwind the damage. It just moves the margin around.

Trump Wants Credit for “Fixing” Biden’s Inflation: But He Isn’t Fixing Anything

The White House insists that “putting Joe Biden’s inflation crisis firmly behind us” has been Trump’s priority from day one. That’s what a spokesperson told CNN in an official statement.

But economists do not agree.

Tariffs are taxes, full stop. And study after study has shown that U.S. consumers, not foreign exporters, bear most of the cost, a fact documented extensively by The Brookings Institution and the Peterson Institute for International Economics.

Even during Trump’s first term, the New York Fed found that his trade war raised consumer costs significantly. Nothing about his second-term tariffs has proven different.

Now, after fumbling implementation, ballooning costs, and voter backlash, Trump is trying to spin a walk-back as economic relief. But as Wells Fargo’s Sarah House explains, prices naturally fluctuate — and tend to rise over time. Tariff tweaks won’t reverse that.

“This isn’t going to cure consumers’ angst about elevated prices,” she told CNN.

TACO Is Not a Strategy, It’s an Admission of Failure

Trump’s allies can bluster about Biden-era inflation all day, but the reality is this: Tariff policy is the Trump administration’s economic north star, and it keeps backfiring.

Every time Trump hits American consumers with a new trade tax and then quietly retreats, the market responds the same way:

• Retailers adjust prices upward

• Importers shift sourcing

• Supply chains absorb new inefficiencies

• Consumers see little to no relief

Then, when prices spike and voters rebel, Trump “chickens out”,  earning the TACO label yet again — and then demands credit for solving the problem he created.

That is not economic leadership. It’s damage control.

Bottom Line: Tariff TACO Is Just More Empty Calories

The latest TACO won’t lower your grocery bill in any meaningful way. It won’t restore affordability. It won’t undo the damage caused by months of trade-policy whiplash.

It’s political optics, a rebranding exercise from an administration caught flat-footed by rising costs and angry voters.

If Trump truly wanted to make America affordable again, he wouldn’t rely on tariffs that economists across the ideological spectrum say don’t work. He wouldn’t create price instability and then scramble to reverse it. And he wouldn’t be selling Americans another TACO, warmed over, re-spun, and still lacking substance.