Everybody’s familiar with that old formula for success in the stock market. The market has always had ups and downs and always will, but lately it’s been doing a dance even a yo-yo would envy. Buy low, sell high. It’s important, though, to be able to afford this strategy. If a Joe investor buys a stack of stock when its value is down, and it continues to descend until it flat-lines and he’s lost every penny he put into it, but he has piles of pennies in reserve, it’s an insignificant setback. There will be plenty of other similar opportunities. Not only can Joe afford to lose, he can afford to wait, but most of us can’t afford such risk. Either we leave stocks alone and invest in something “safer,” or we trust experts to do the investing for us.

But what if Joe’s not only got mountains of money, he wants mountains more? He wants dramatic movement in the market. What might supply that drama? What would make not just individual stocks but entire indexes go up and down like a mad clown on a pogo stick? Tariffs might do it, but they couldn’t be ordinary tariffs. They would have to be blinking on and off. Not only that, the blinking must be erratic. Turn the tariffs on: the market goes down. Turn them off: the market goes up. Buy and sell and reap massive returns accordingly. But even the fattest fat cats and the biggest bankers on Wall Street and the savviest savants in Silicon Valley lack the ability to impose tariffs, let alone ones characterized by dependable — or even predictable — unpredictability. That’s something only Congress and the CEO of the US government can do (with Congress’s blessing, in the form of legislation).

How to solve this problem? Joe and his peers (each with a money mountain they want to grow — let’s call them Joe & Company) invest in a presidential candidate and his party and his administration (once it is formed). These “investors” don’t have to be American citizens (just not poor or seeking asylum). They can even be a foreign nation. (Emoluments clause of the Constitution? That’s for suckers and losers.) And so we proceed down this zig-zag path, sashaying between tariffs on and tariffs off, so Joe & Company can reap extravagant profits while most of the rest of us get squat … if we’re lucky.

The people creating this financial havoc tell us it’s about deal-making, that the tariffs are both a bargaining tool and a cudgel to punish those who have been “unfair” to us. To me, it looks more like market manipulation on a stupendous scale. As for those deals, most have not been finalized.

It has recently reached a point where taking advantage of the most obvious parts of this scheme has been given its own name (by the Financial Times’ Robert Armstrong) which is now widely (and wryly) used by Wall Street traders. It’s TACO trading, where TACO stands for “Trump Always Chickens Out.” But I don’t think it’s chickening out. I think it’s just a recognition of the obvious: time to yank the chain before the economy totally tanks. And, as a bonus cover for this little game, whether tariff-targeted “trading partners” come to the table first (as the EU did) or whether they refuse to cave, the Trump administration’s backing-off fosters an impression of reasonableness or even generosity (oh, we can deal with this guy after all); but, two weeks into a three-week pause, will the dog get kicked in the ribs again?

On May 28, the U.S. Court of International Trade ruled against selected Trump tariffs, finding that Trump (or his attorneys) had misapplied the International Emergency Economic Powers Act. Sighs of relief across the land…soon followed by gasps of disbelief. The Trump crew had immediately appealed, and the Appeals Court stayed the Trade Court’s decision with the intention of allowing the appellate judges time to examine the question. How much time will they need? How will they rule? The only thing that seems certain is the case landing in the Supreme Court, where the Trumpeteers own a pretty reliable majority. So, the TACO trading continues, and the oligarchs grow fatter by the day. But Trump is not happy. He doesn’t like being called a chicken. And he especially doesn’t like being laughed at. How will he act out his anger this time? That’s an uncertainty which should be cause for concern even among those who predictably profit from his madness.

Meanwhile, people who are supposed to know better and keep us informed are just waking up. One Australian economist commented on MSNBC, May 27, that Trump’s pronouncements now lack “credibility.” Are you kidding!? Where has this guy been for the last eight years? Then we go from the clueless to the too smart for their own good. An analyst from a German bank noted in the wake of the April 2 “Liberation Day” tariffs that Trump, having already paused them, would probably retreat further based on past performance and to avoid the damage such tariffs would do to the United States.

Not smart at all to be so cocksure about what Donald Trump will or will not do. There may well come a day when his managers can no longer manage him, when his paltry sense of what’s good for the nation (beyond how it may serve him) fades in the glare of unsettled scores, and when his impulse to lash out overwhelms his sense of self-preservation. It’s a scenario that transcends economics and makes moot which of us has the most pennies. It’s why those with a clear understanding of the possibilities — including those in government who still care about such things — lose sleep over Trump’s possession of the “football” — the one with the nuclear codes.

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Phil Gallos lives in Saranac Lake.

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