Gold and Silver Slip as Trump Tariffs Spike US Copper Prices, Nasdaq Tests New High
Wednesday, 7/09/2025 16:29
GOLD and SILVER PRICES slipped again in London on Wednesday, both trading 0.3% lower in US Dollar terms while Western stock markets rose − and the Nasdaq index of US tech stocks touched a new record high − despite fresh geopolitical and US trade-tariff turmoil.
Copper futures on New York's CME exchange leapt as much as 18.5% after President Trump declared overnight that he will impose a 50% tariff on new imports of the industrially-vital base metal.
Promising another
slew of letters demanding new trade deals with more partner nations, Trump also vowed "no extension" of this week's extension to the 90-day pause in his 2nd April "Liberation Day" tariffs from tomorrow until 1 August.
But with microchips currently exempt from Trump's trade tariffs, stock in giant AI tech-makers Nvidia (Nasdaq: NVDA) rose to make it the world's first ever $4 trillion company.
That pulled the Nasdaq Composite index up 0.6% for the New York opening, briefly topping last Thursday's all-time closing high.
While CME copper futures jumped in New York, physical copper prices today fell back on both the global London Metal Exchange and in No.1 consumer China's Shanghai market.
That's because "the quicker that a [US] tariff ruling is made, the quicker the extreme scarcity of copper units ex-US" − driven by traders pouring metal into the States ahead of Trump's tariffs − "will start to ease," says Natalie Scott-Gray, Senior Metals Analyst EMEA & Asia at brokerage StoneX.
Both
gold and silver also poured into the USA earlier this year, swelling Comex warehouse stockpiles to new all-time records ahead of Trump's "Liberation Day" announcement on trade tariffs, which
in the end left bullion imports exempt.
Losing out to US copper futures as
the first half of 2025's best-performing major asset class, gold today touched 1-week lows at £3283 per Troy ounce before fixing at London's 3pm benchmarking auction around $3300 and rising a further $12 in late-afternoon trade.
Silver prices meantime fixed around $36.59 per Troy ounce at midday before dropping back to yesterday's low of $36.28.
"The current domestic supply of copper in the United States stands at 64%," says Bruce Ikemizu, formerly head of metals in Tokyo for China's ICBC Standard Bank and now director of the Japan Bullion Market Association, "with the remainder relying on imports.
"Imposing a 50% tariff on those goods would place a significant burden on US industry, making America expensive and surely strangling the country's own economy. I think what they are doing is completely illogical."
Trump meantime confirmed the re-start of military assistance to Ukraine, briefly paused again last week, because − already "not happy" with Russia's President
Putin after their July 3rd phonecall − Moscow's failure to engage in peace talks means he is considering additional financial and economic sanctions against the Kremlin.
"We get a lot of bullshit thrown at us by Putin," Trump told reporters.
"He's very nice all the time, but it turns out to be meaningless."
Russia today launched its heaviest-yet aerial attack on Ukraine, topping last Friday's assault with 728 drones and 13 cruise or ballistic missiles.
The European Court of Human Rights today ruled that Russia's invasion of Ukraine has broken international law with human rights abuses, and also found that Moscow was responsible for the shooting-down of Malaysia Airlines Flight 17 (MH17) during its annexation of Crimea in 2014.
United Nations official Francesca Albanese, the special rapporteur on human rights in Gaza, meantime condemned European nations for allowing Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu − wanted by the International Criminal Court on charges of crimes against humanity − to fly across their airspace to meet Trump in Washington last Sunday.
"Italian, French and Greek citizens deserve to know that every political action violating the int'l legal order, weakens and endangers all of them. And all of us," tweeted Albanese on X.
But while ceasefire talks apparently continue with Israel, "Gaza will not surrender and the resistance will impose the conditions," says Hamas, the Iran-backed militia and political party which killed over 1,200 Israelis in the October 7th atrocities of 23 months ago.
A group of 100 Muslim "scholars and intellectuals" convened by Iran's theocratic dictatorship today called for "the complete liberation of Palestine and the total eradication of the cancerous Zionist entity."
Netanyahu yesterday nominated US President Trump for the Nobel Peace Prize.
Hamas claims that
over 57,000 people have been killed in Israel's invasion of Gaza, plus another 105 killed today, with separate estimates
putting the figure still higher.
Gold in Dollar terms has now risen by more than 80% since October 2023, far outpacing all assets except Bitcoin with 1/4 of those gains coming since Trump returned to the White House this January.
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