Gold prices dipped on Wednesday after U.S. President Donald Trump hinted at lower tariffs for China and said he has no plans to fire Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell.
Spot gold fell 2.1% to $3,310.29 an ounce, as of 0811 GMT, after hitting a record high of $3,500.05 in the previous session.
Spot silver rose 1% to $32.85 an ounce.
Platinum was up 0.6% at $964.35 and palladium was steady at $935.48.
Source – Reuters
Copper prices have been on a stellar run, boosted by President Donald Trump’s proposed tariffs. But Wall Street sees headwinds for the metal, with two miners catching downgrades.
Freeport stock lost 3.2%, closing at $44.12, while the S&P 500 and Dow Jones Industrial Average dropped 0.4% and 1%, respectively.
Southern Copper shares fell 2.4% to $97.54.
As for demand, Citi analyst Tom Mulqueen noted in a Tuesday report that tariffs and policy changes will be a headwind in the second half of 2025.
“We also see sustained sluggish manufacturing activity and solar frontloading weighing on copper end-use consumption in the months ahead,” wrote Mulqueen.
Source – Barron’s
Freeport’s last export permit expired at the end of 2024, but the company has requested it can continue selling copper concentrate abroad because its local copper smelter was in repair after a fire in October last year.
“The trade ministry supports a plan to relax the export policy after weighing the cost and benefit analysis … while also observing the sustainability of the government’s natural resource downstreaming policy,” deputy minister Dyah Roro Esti said in a statement.
Freeport Indonesia said that it’s currently negotiating with the government over the export permit and believed the government “would accommodate” it.
Source – Mining.com
India has dispatched a team of geologists to Zambia to explore copper and cobalt deposits, two Indian government sources said, as New Delhi steps up efforts to secure critical mineral supplies essential to its energy transition.
The Zambian government this year agreed to allocate 9,000 square km (3,475 square miles) to India for the exploration of cobalt – a key component in batteries for electric vehicles and mobile phones – as well as for scouting copper, which is widely used in power generation, electronics, and construction.
The exploration project will last for three years and most of the analysis will be done in laboratories in India, one of the sources said.
Source – Reuters
The bank’s analysts found that only 10% of the 126 posts Trump had published this time around on sensitive topics such as trade tariffs, foreign relations and economics had caused clear currency market moves.
“Among the different topics, the posts on tariffs have been the biggest market movers,” JPMorgan’s note published on Monday said, adding that closer to a third of those ones had been market moving.
Source – KITCO News / Reuters
China, the biggest steel maker, is not a top direct exporter of steel to the U.S. but Trump said that China’s exports had forced others to ship more to the U.S., while rising imports “support a conclusion” of transshipment or processing of steel products via third party countries into the U.S.
“Today is a great day for the U.S. aluminum industry,” said Mark Duffy, president of the APAA.
“Unfair trade practices have devastated the domestic aluminum industry and President Trump’s actions today will protect thousands of American workers and their families.”
Source – Reuters
Shares of Barrick Gold Corp. dropped 1.14% to C$24.33 Friday, in what proved to be an all-around poor trading session for the Canadian market, with the S&P/TSX Composite Index falling 0.36% to 25,442.91.
Source – Market Watch
