Gold Price News: Gold Hits Fresh All-Time High on Trade War Risk

Gold prices set another all-time high on Tuesday, as the markets continued to weigh the economic risks of US import tariffs, providing support to safe-haven assets.

Prices rose to an intraday high of $2,847 an ounce on Tuesday, up from around $2,816 an ounce in late trades on Monday. The action translated into day-on-day gains of around 0.9% for gold.

US tariffs trigger Chinese response

Precious metals prices continued to benefit from economic uncertainties amid trade tariffs announced by US President Donald Trump. The Trump administration delayed stated tariffs on imports from Canada and Mexico for a month, but went ahead with 10% duties on all goods imported from China. This prompted Asia’s giant economy to follow suit with targeted levies on imports of US oil, agricultural equipment and some vehicles, to begin on February 10^th, unless a deal can be struck between the two nations.

A spiralling tit-for-tat round of tariffs involving an unknown number of countries could cause severe disruption to companies with cross-border supply chains. All this spells uncertainty for the global economy, making investors uneasy and more likely to seek out the sanctuary of safe havens like precious metals.

Market positioning

Meanwhile, net long positions on gold futures on the US Comex platform increased slightly to 952.2 tonnes in the week to January 28, according to World Gold Council figures: Gold Open Interest Chart 2021. That compared with 943.1 tonnes in the previous week, the figures showed.

Upcoming data

Looking ahead, Wednesday will bring the euro area HCOB services PMI figures for January, a leading indicator of business activity in Europe. Later in the day, the US ISM services PMI figures will be released for January. This will be followed by Thursday’s weekly US initial jobless claims figures, and Friday’s non-farm payrolls figures, providing further updates on the US labour market.