What is SALSA?
SALSA stands for Strategic Analysis of Leadership Stress & Adjustment.
It is a composite index that tracks four macro signals — presidential approval, S&P 500, 10-Year Treasury yields, and inflation expectations — to measure the political-economic pressure on the current administration. When all four signals deteriorate simultaneously, history shows that policy reversals (particularly on tariffs and trade) become likely.
The index also computes a TACO Probability (Tariff Adjustment from Compounding Outrage): the estimated likelihood of a major policy reversal within the next 30 days.
Why This Exists
In early 2025, Deutsche Bank’s macro strategist Maximilian Uleer created what he called the “Taco Index” — a framework for predicting when the Trump administration would reverse tariff policies based on political-economic stress indicators. The concept went viral across financial media:
Despite widespread media coverage, no public, real-time version of the index existed. The original was a proprietary Deutsche Bank research product available only to institutional clients.
We built the SALSA Index to fill that gap — a free, open-source, transparent implementation that anyone can access, verify, and build upon.
Complex AI Institute
The SALSA Index is a project of the Complex AI Institute, an independent research organization exploring the intersection of artificial intelligence, complex systems, and public policy.
Built by Sam Beni with a lot of help from Claude.
Open Source
The entire codebase is open source under the MIT License.
Contributions, issues, and pull requests are welcome. If you find a bug or have an idea for improvement, open an issue on GitHub.