TACO vs. FAFO: Geopolitical expert Ian Bremmer on acronyms describing Trump #TEDTalks

There have been two acronyms that have been described by very different populations um in understanding uh how Trump behaves and one is taco. Trump always chickens out used by his adversaries and his opponents to say, you know, Trump doesn't have a fist in his glove and he says he's going to do X, Y, and Z, but then he backs down. And then the second is fafo [ __ ] around and find out. And that is Trump's supporters and members of his own administration and sometimes Trump himself that says, you know, you don't do what Trump wants you to do and he's going to hurt you and the consequences are going to be serious. And of course, the reality, like so many of these things in our very divided, hair on fire political environment, the reality is that both of these things exist at the same time. But they exist along a spectrum. You have, you know, certain very powerful countries that are capable and willing to actually respond with strength to Trump's unilateralism. And you'd put Xiinping's China number one in that category. But you'd also put Putin in that category and others. And they are the taco countries. Brazil even, you know, they were the Brazilians were pushed really hard despite the Donroe doctrine. You know, Trump said, "I'm going to tariff you unless you do something about your social media regulation. I don't like the way it's treating our companies. And you're going after my buddy Jar Bolsinaro, whose son has been lobbying me down at Mara Lago. and you just gave him a 27year jail sentence for fake news, you know, trying to overturn the election and organize the assassination of Lula. Um, and so I'm going to tariff you. And Trump has backed right down. Backed down because Brazil is a big economy and he needs Brazilian commodities um to be uh to have to be exported to the United States to bring prices down. And so Lula and Trump are actually now working towards a deal. They're on the taco side of the equation. But then we've got the fafo side of the equation and Venezuela is obviously on the fafo side of the equation. Maduro has figured that out. He thought he was taco until about two 48 hours ago. I assure you that Maduro now understands that they are solidly um in fafo territory.