Markets are waiting for Trump to back down, but it might be too late
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/business/2026/03/31/markets-banking-on-another-taco-what-if-there-isnt-one/
Jeremy Warner:
Financial markets have become conditioned to believe that when push comes to shove, Trump always backs down. Many sense a similar dynamic at play in the movement of US troops into the Gulf region, together with the threat to invade Kharg Island, Iran’s main oil export terminal. As for suggestions of a military operation to seize Iran’s stockpile of enriched uranium, this is not brinkmanship but just fantasy. Everyone can see it as such.
The problem Trump has is that the more he threatens only to back down, the less seriously everyone takes him. To maintain credibility, he must at some stage go through with his threats. As things stand, it is like a game of chicken, only with two 10-tonne trucks packed with explosives speeding towards each other on a single-lane bridge. Trump may have already run out of road for any reverse handbrake turn.
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/business/2026/03/31/markets-banking-on-another-taco-what-if-there-isnt-one/
Jeremy Warner:
Financial markets have become conditioned to believe that when push comes to shove, Trump always backs down. Many sense a similar dynamic at play in the movement of US troops into the Gulf region, together with the threat to invade Kharg Island, Iran’s main oil export terminal. As for suggestions of a military operation to seize Iran’s stockpile of enriched uranium, this is not brinkmanship but just fantasy. Everyone can see it as such.
The problem Trump has is that the more he threatens only to back down, the less seriously everyone takes him. To maintain credibility, he must at some stage go through with his threats. As things stand, it is like a game of chicken, only with two 10-tonne trucks packed with explosives speeding towards each other on a single-lane bridge. Trump may have already run out of road for any reverse handbrake turn.