HUNT VALLEY, Md. (TNND) — President Donald Trump's tariff regime is less than three months old, yet it has changed wildly from month to month and sometimes even day to day and hour to hour. He's applied across-the-board duties on the whole world and strict ones on China only to pull back. Traders on Wall Street are starting to notice a pattern.

Trump's taken investors for a ride in the meantime as they wrestle with where the administration takes tariffs next. But some market players think they've detected a new type of international trade developing under the president. They have a word for the method -- TACO, which is short for Trump Always Chickens Out.

The president was asked about that on Wednesday at the White House.

“I chicken out? Oh, I’ve never heard that. You mean because I reduced China from 145% that I set down to 100 and then to another number?” he said, referring to tariff rates he imposed on Chinese goods. Trump dropped it later to where it is now -- 30%.

Other pauses and reversals happened recently as well.

Stocks turned lower after Trump threatened to apply 50% tariffs on imports from the European Union last week. The president doubled down on the claim later that same day, arguing the deadline for the duty was June 1st and that there was not much that could be done.

Just two days later, Trump reversed course and told reporters he'd wait until July 9 to impose the levies following promising talks. He said European Commission President Ursula Von Der Leyen convinced him to put off the tariffs for another day. Stocks closed well in the green the day after Memorial Day.

Trump pushed back against the TACO label claim.

“You call that chickening out?” Trump said, referring to his multiple ease ups. “It’s called negotiation,” Trump added, claiming he's using a tactic where he sets “a ridiculous high number” before landing on something more agreeable to the countries he's tariffing.

The president's willingness to oscillate between the two extremes doesn't have anything to do with setting proper tariffs, nor is it about gaining a better negotiating position, according to former Rep. Adam Kinzinger. He believes there's something more nefarious at play.

"At this point, Trump's tariff threats are just stock market manipulation," Kinzinger wrote in a tweet earlier this month. "Nobody will prosecute him. Just fyi: break the law today, you better hope statute of limitations runs out, you will be held accountable eventually."

Kinzinger is a longtime critic of the president, and he sat on the House select committee that investigated the January 6, 2021, Capitol Hill riot. The former Republican congressman is facing a possible Justice Department probe into his work in that investigation.

Democratic lawmakers hinted at a wider probe into suggestions of market manipulation last month after Trump told his followers on Truth Social, "this is a great time to buy" hours before announcing his 90-day pause on most of his "Liberation Day" tariffs.

"These constant gyrations in policy provide dangerous opportunities for insider trading," Sen. Adam Schiff, D-CA, wrote on social media after the president suspended the duties. Sen. Chris Murphy, D-Conn, said something similar, saying there is a "scandal brewing."

These gyrations, as Schiff calls them, are likely to have profound impacts on the overall economy.

Economists are expecting a tick up in prices as goods become hard to come by at ports, and the Federal Reserve is weighing the possibility of stagflation, which could put the bank's dual mandate of low unemployment and stable prices at risk. Those concerns were discussed during the Fed's most recent meeting.

Some analysts are equating Trump's behavior to the COVID pandemic, which disrupted supply chains and triggered one of the worst inflation spikes in decades.

"The president is acting about as unreliably as a virus," Justin Wolfers, professor of economics and public policy at the University of Michigan, told The National News Desk. As a result, the countries at the brunt end of Trump's tariffs are starting to "realize they don't want to be at the whims of the United States."

Instead of haphazardly imposing and then rescinding his duties, Wolfers argues a better approach is to bring Congress into the mix. Congressional action would help cement the president's trade policies well into the future after he's no longer in office, he argued.

Going that route gives American companies the benefit of knowing where they stand in the U.S. economy long-term, according to Wolfers. A far more important question than whether there is a recession this year or next is what happens in the next eight years, he added.

"People have been too busy talking about short-term questions," he said. "The far more important question is what are the right policies in the long run."