Precious Metals Fall with Stocks as Trump Threatens Anti-BRICS Trade Tariffs
Monday, 7/07/2025 14:42
GOLD PRICES fell with world stock markets on Monday as the Dollar rebounded from multi-year lows after US President Donald Trump threatened to impose an additional 10% trade tariff on any country aligning with "the Anti-American policies of BRICS,"
writes Atsuko Whitehouse at BullionVault.
Industrial precious metals silver, platinum and palladium also dropped ahead of Washington’s Wednesday deadline for re-imposing
the 'Liberation Day' trade tariffs Trump announced at the start of April.
Named after Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa,
the BRICS nations held a summit over the weekend, but 6 of the group's 11 heads of state skipped the Rio de Janeiro meeting, including Xi Jinping of No.1 gold mining and consumer nation China plus Vladimir Putin of No.3 gold miner Russia.
The Rio summit ended with a joint BRICS statement agreeing to "voice serious concerns about
the rise of unilateral tariff and non-tariff measures which distort trade and are inconsistent with World Trade Organization (WTO) rules."
With Asian stock markets falling on Monday and New York's tech-heavy Nasdaq opening 0.4% lower following Trump's anti-BRICS threat, the MSCI All-Country World Index slipped by 0.2% as European bourses rose, trading just 0.3% beneath last Thursday's new all-time high.
Spot gold prices slid as much as 1.2% today to $3296 per Troy ounce, still $50 above last Monday's 5-week lows, while the Dollar Index – a measure of the US currency's value versus its major peers – rose as much as 0.4%, the biggest advance in 3 weeks.
"Any Country aligning themselves with the Anti-American policies of BRICS, will be charged an ADDITIONAL 10% Tariff," Trump said in a Truth Social post.
"There will be no exceptions to this policy."
"If Liberation Day was the earthquake, the tariff letters will be the aftershocks," says a portfolio manager quoted by Reuters.
"They won't quite have the same impact on markets even if they are higher than the earlier 10%."
With
Trump's 2nd April Liberation Day trade tariffs exempting bullion but crushing 'risk' assets led by stocks, gold fell as much as 3.4% over the following week but rebounded to fresh all-time highs before trading 27.6% higher for 2025-to-date on Monday in US Dollar terms.
Industrially-useful silver, platinum, and palladium dropped 10.9%, 6.1% and 8.4% respectively by 9th April, but have since rebounded to show gains of 27.6%, 50.8% and 23.4% for the year to date.
The MSCI ACWI has meantime recovered its Liberation Day plunge and more, trading 10.1% above New Year today.
“We’re going to be very busy over the next 72 hours,” US Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said Sunday, referring to the time left before the Trump administration’s deadline for re-imposing tariffs, now due potentially to take effect at the start of next month.
"If you don’t move things along, then on August 1 you will boomerang back to your April 2 tariff level."
So far, Trump has announced trade deals with the United Kingdom, which maintained the 10% tariff on imports to the USA imposed by Liberation Day; China, which temporarily cut duty on most goods from 145% to 30%; and Vietnam, which faces a minimum 20% tariff on goods, plus another 20% on any goods passing through it from China.
Gold priced in Euros today fell 0.7% towards a 1-week low of €2814 per Troy ounce, while
the UK gold price in Pounds slipped 0.8% to £2424 per ounce − a decline also limited by the currency weakening against the Dollar on the FX market.
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