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“Liberation Day” tariffs!

ByVictoria

Stocks recoiled on Wednesday, while safe-haven gold held near record highs as a nervous world awaited details of U.S. President Donald Trump’s tariff plans and investors fretted about the risks of an intensifying global trade war.

“Whatever’s announced today, I doubt very much will be the framework that’s in place in, say, nine months’ time because we know there’ll be negotiations around this,” Daiwa Capital economist Chris Scicluna said.

“It’s very difficult to predict with any confidence what the ultimate impact is going to be, whether broadly, economically, in terms of rates or in terms of stock markets,” he said.

“Investors are hoping for some clarity, and perhaps the start of the deal-making phase. But tariffs are already weighing on business sentiment, and this will probably feed through into lower global economic activity in the coming months,” said Ben Bennett, Asia-Pacific investment strategist at Legal & General Investment Management.

Source – Reuters

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    President Trump wants to see Fort Knox gold for himself

    ByVictoria
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    “We have found hundreds of billions of dollars of fraud so far. And we’ve just started. We’re actually going to Fort Knox to see if the gold is there, because maybe somebody stole the gold. Tons of gold,” Trump said.

    “I think the gold is probably there. It’s probably almost certainly there,” David Sacks, Trump’s crypto czar, told Fox News last week, though he still agreed with the president’s calls to investigate the matter.

    “Nobody thinks this is a crazy idea to go check because we don’t know,” Sacks added, arguing that “we cannot fully trust that our gold is still in Fort Knox” because of the “corruption” in Washington.

    Source – ABC News

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    Gold keeps reaching new highs

    ByVictoria
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    Gold touched an all-time high on Monday, breaching the $3,100 level, as investors turned to the safe-haven asset amid concerns that U.S. President Donald Trump’s tariff plans would stoke a global trade war and economic fallout.

    Spot gold was up 0.6% to $3,103.63 an ounce, as of 0255 GMT, after hitting a record high of $3,107.26 earlier. Bullion is up over 8% in March.

    “Markets anxiety levels have been ramping up ahead of the reciprocal U.S. tariff announcements, which is keeping gold in high demand as a defensive play,” KCM Trade chief market analyst, Tim Waterer said.

    “If the tariff announcements this week are not as severe as feared, then the gold price could start to backtrack as profit-taking from the highs may be triggered.”

    Spot silver rose 0.4% to $34.23 an ounce, platinum was steady at $983.51 and palladium gained 0.4% to $975.70.

    Source – Reuters

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    Switzerland gold imports at highest

    ByVictoria
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    Gold imports to Switzerland from the United States jumped to the highest monthly level since at least 2012 in April after the exclusion of precious metals from U.S. import tariffs, Swiss customs data showed on Tuesday.

    The Swiss data showed that gold imports from the U.S. rose to 63.0 metric tons in April from 25.5 tons in March. It was the highest in monthly data going back to early 2012.

    Switzerland’s total gold exports fell by 31% month on month in April with gold deliveries to the U.S. dropping to 12.7 tons from 103.3 tons in March.

    Source – Reuters

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    Tariff deadline might extend for China

    ByVictoria
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    Gold futures reversed early losses to reach new all-time highs Tuesday, gaining for a third straight session on weaker U.S. bond yields and persistent trade and monetary policy uncertainty as investors continue to anxiously await President Trump’s August 1 tariff deadline.

    The yield on benchmark U.S. 10-year notes fell near two-week low, making non-yielding bullion more attractive.

    U.S. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said he plans to meet his Chinese counterpart next week, suggesting a possible extension of an August 12 tariff deadline, but European Union diplomats hinted that the E.U. is looking at broader counter-measures against the U.S. as prospects for a trade agreement dwindle.

    “Trade uncertainty is prompting some safe haven demand,” Kitco Metals senior analyst Jim Wyckoff wrote. “The U.S. has got several trade deals in the works and there’s rumors that the E.U. and the U.S. might not be able to come to an agreement or certainly are not anywhere close yet.”

    Source – Seeking Alpha

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    100K-150K metric tons of copper to arrive in the US

    ByVictoria
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    The U.S. will soon be flooded with massive amounts of copper shipments in a global rush to front-run President Trump’s probable tariffs, with 100K-150K metric tons of refined copper expected to arrive in U.S. ports in the coming weeks, which potentially would surpass the all-time record of 136,951 tons set in January 2022, Bloomberg reported Wednesday.

    Goldman Sachs analysts said they expect all forms of copper shipped to the U.S. to be hit with tariffs by year-end, keeping Comex prices at a hefty premium over other benchmarks, and noted that tariffs could cause China to refine 10K-20K tons/month less copper within the first three months – in a global market that Goldman already expected to face a 180K-ton deficit this year.

    Source – Seeking Alpha