Gold falls to near two-week low after US, EU agree to tariff deal
Spot gold was down 0.1% at $3,332.18 per ounce, as of 0208 GMT, after touching its lowest level since July 17. U.S. gold futures edged 0.1% lower to $3,331.60.
The U.S. struck a framework trade agreement with the European Union on Sunday, imposing a 15% import tariff on most EU goods - half the threatened rate - and averting a bigger trade war between the two allies that account for almost a third of global trade.
However, the agreement left key issues unresolved, including tariffs on spirits.
The agreement eased transatlantic trade tensions, putting pressure on gold, said Jigar Trivedi, a senior commodity analyst at Reliance Securities, adding that it also softened the dollar index, which provided some cushion to bullion.
The U.S. dollar index eased 0.1%, making greenback-priced bullion more affordable for overseas buyers.
Risk sentiment improved following the agreement, with European currencies and U.S. stock index futures trading higher.
Meanwhile, senior U.S. and Chinese negotiators are set to meet in Stockholm later in the day to address long-standing economic disputes, seeking to extend a truce that has prevented higher tariffs.
"In the short term, we don't expect gold to experience wild swings. Investors are turning their focus to a pivotal week for U.S. monetary policy and economic data," Trivedi said.
The Federal Reserve is expected to maintain its benchmark interest rate in the 4.25%-4.50% range after its two-day policy meeting concludes on Wednesday.
U.S. President Donald Trump said on Friday he had a positive meeting with Powell, suggesting the Fed chief might be inclined to lower interest rates.
Spot silver was up 0.2% at $38.23 per ounce, while platinum gained 0.6% to $1,409.50 and palladium rose 0.6% to $1,227.76.
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
CNBC
13 minutes ago
- CNBC
OpenAI releases lower-cost models to rival Meta, Mistral and DeepSeek
OpenAI on Tuesday released two open-weight language models for the first time since it rolled out GPT-2 in 2019. The text-only models are called gpt-oss-120b and gpt-oss-20b, and are designed to serve as lower-cost options that developers, researchers and companies can easily run and customize, OpenAI said. An artificial intelligence model is considered open weight if its parameters, or the elements that improve its outputs and predictions during training, are publicly available. Open-weight models can offer transparency and control, but they are different from open-source models, whose full source code becomes available for people to use and modify. Several other tech companies, including Meta, Microsoft-backed Mistral AI and the Chinese startup DeepSeek, have also released open-weight models in recent years. "It's been exciting to see an ecosystem develop, and we are excited to contribute to that and really push the frontier and then see what happens from there," OpenAI President Greg Brockman told reporters during a briefing. The company collaborated with Nvidia, Advanced Micro Devices, Cerebras, and Groq to ensure the models will work well on a variety of chips. "OpenAI showed the world what could be built on Nvidia AI — and now they're advancing innovation in open-source software," Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang said in a statement. The release of OpenAI's open weight models has been highly anticipated, in part because the company repeatedly delayed the launch. In a post on X in July, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman said the company needed more time to "run additional safety tests and review high-risk areas." That came after a separate post weeks earlier, where Altman said the models would not be released in June. OpenAI said Tuesday that it carried out extensive safety training and testing on its open-weight models. It filtered out harmful chemical, biological, radiological and nuclear data during pre-training, and it mimicked how bad actors could try to fine-tune the models for malicious purposes. Through this testing, OpenAI said it determined that maliciously fine-tuned models were not able to reach the "high capability" threshold in its Preparedness Framework, which is its method for measuring and protecting against harm. The company also worked with three independent expert groups who provided feedback on its malicious fine-tuning evaluation, OpenAI said. OpenAI said people can download the weights for gpt-oss-120b and gpt-oss-20b on platforms like Hugging Face and GitHub under an Apache 2.0 license. The models will be available to run on PCs through programs such as LM Studio and Ollama. Cloud providers Amazon, Baseten and Microsoft are also making the models available. Both models can handle advanced reasoning, tool use and chain‑of‑thought processing, and are designed to run anywhere — from consumer hardware to the cloud to on-device applications. Users can run gpt-oss-20b on a laptop, for instance, and use it as a personal assistant that can search through files and write, OpenAI said. "We're excited to make this model, the result of billions of dollars of research, available to the world to get AI into the hands of the most people possible," Altman said in a statement Tuesday.
New York Post
41 minutes ago
- New York Post
Tesla sales sink in UK, Germany as Europeans warm to Chinese rival BYD
Tesla sales plunged in Europe's two biggest car markets over the past year, while low-cost Chinese rival BYD continued to race ahead — marking what industry watchers are calling a fundamental shift in the electric vehicle landscape. Elon Musk's pioneering EV company registered just 1,110 new vehicles in Germany last month, a 55% year-over-year drop in its largest European market, according to data released Tuesday. In Britain, Tesla's No. 2 market in Europe, Tesla sales cratered by nearly 60% year over year, with only 987 new registrations in July, according to the UK Society of Motor Manufacturers and Traders. Advertisement 4 A Tesla dealership in Germany, once a symbol of dominance, now reflects the company's steep sales decline. The troubling sales figures come a day after Tesla shareholders granted Musk a new pay package worth nearly $30 billion. The eye-popping compensation is intended to keep Musk focused on the company amid sluggish sales on both sides of the Atlantic in the past 12 months after the mogul increased his political activities. In Europe, he's publicly backed far-right figures and parties — supporting Reform UK and Tommy Robinson in Britain, endorsing Germany's AfD, and expressing sympathy for Marine Le Pen in France. Advertisement In the US, the world's richest person was Donald Trump's largest donor during his presidential run and had a controversial stint in the White House as the de facto head of the Department of Government Efficiency — before their very public falling out in May. In Germany, Tesla has tumbled from third place to eighth in electric vehicle rankings for the first half of 2025, watching its market share shrink from 8.3% to 3.6%. While Tesla has floundered, Germany's EV sales jumped 58% overall and Britain saw growth of nearly 40% over the past seven months. Advertisement 4 Elon Musk addresses the press as Tesla grapples with collapsing sales across key European markets. REUTERS BYD, which counts Warren Buffett's Berkshire Hathaway as an investor, has raced up the charts with vehicles that cost about one-third less than Tesla's cheapest model. In Britain, the company more than quadrupled its registrations in July, building on momentum that saw it register 2,498 vehicles in June alone — a fourfold increase over the previous year. Germany tells a similar tale. BYD's first-half registrations shot up to 4,544 units, compared to around 900 during the same period last year. Advertisement 4 The BYD logo outside a dealership signals the brand's rapid rise in Western Europe, challenging Tesla's lead. Getty Images The global picture reveals just how dramatically things have shifted. BYD sold over 1.1 million plug-in vehicles during the second quarter of 2025, including both battery-only cars and plug-in hybrids, while Tesla managed about 384,000 battery-only electric vehicles. For the first time ever, BYD's battery-only EV sales actually surpassed Tesla's, with the company moving more than 2.1 million total vehicles globally in the first half of the year. Despite Tesla's woes across the pond, it has maintained its position as the most popular EV makers in the United States. 4 A protestor holds up a sign in Berlin earlier this year — one of several public actions pushing back against Tesla's image in Europe. REUTERS The company held a dominant 46% share of the EV market in the second quarter — even after sales dropped an estimated 15% in the first quarter of 2025. But competition stateside is heating up. Advertisement Legacy automakers like General Motors, Honda, Nissan and Porsche posted major year-over-year gains in EV volume, signaling a shift in the competitive landscape. Overall, EVs accounted for 7.4% of all new light-duty vehicles sold in the US during Q2 2025.
Yahoo
an hour ago
- Yahoo
India accuses EU and US of ‘indulging' in trade with Russia
India has accused the EU and US of 'indulging' in trade with Russia after Donald Trump criticised New Delhi for propping up Vladimir Putin's war machine by buying its oil. The country's foreign ministry said it was forced to buy 'predictable and affordable' Russian oil after other supplies were diverted to Europe after the invasion of Ukraine in 2022. It comes after the US president threatened to 'substantially raise' tariffs on India, adding the country was buying discounted Russian oil and 'selling it on the open market for big profits.' India called the attack 'unjustified and unreasonable' in a statement, arguing that its dealings with Russia were 'a necessity' for the country's economic prospects. It added: 'It is revealing that the very nations criticising India are themselves indulging in trade with Russia. Unlike our case, such trade is not even a vital national compulsion.' While Brussels has vowed to wean itself off Russian oil by 2027, it still imported €22.3bn (£19.3bn) worth of fossil fuels in 2024, with Moscow its third largest trading partner. India said the EU's trade with Russia, at €67.5bn (£58.6bn) of goods last year, 'is significantly more' than India's total trade with Russia, which stood at £51.7bn in the financial year ending in April. India's imports are dominated by oil, with total trade with Russia now six times higher than before the pandemic. By contrast, Brussels has reduced its trade with Moscow from €257bn in 2021. 'Europe-Russia trade includes not just energy, but also fertilisers, mining products, chemicals, iron and steel and machinery and transport equipment,' the Indian government said. India's government also accused the US of continuing 'to import from Russia uranium hexafluoride for its nuclear industry, palladium for its EV industry, fertilisers as well as chemicals'. Mr Trump has repeatedly criticised Mr Modi's administration in the past fortnight, both for the imbalance in trade between the nations and for purchasing Russian energy and weaponry. Last year, the US imported $87.3bn-worth of goods from India, according to official US data, while exporting $41.5bn-worth in the other direction. That leaves a deficit for the US of $45.8bn, an imbalance which Mr Trump regards as a sign that Americans are getting a raw deal. Services trade is more closely balanced, with flows of just under $42bn in each direction. Overnight, the US president ramped up his threat to increase taxes on trade with India. 'India is not only buying massive amounts of Russian oil, they are then, for much of the oil purchased, selling it on the open market for big profits,' he posted on his Truth Social site. 'They don't care how many people in Ukraine are being killed by the Russian war machine. Because of this, I will be substantially raising the tariff paid by India to the USA.' On Friday, the White House announced a raft of new tariffs on goods imports, including a 25pc tax on products arriving from India. However, the president said he will also impose 'a penalty' on top of that rate because of India's purchases from Russia. 'While India is our friend, we have, over the years, done relatively little business with them because their tariffs are far too high, among the highest in the world, and they have the most strenuous and obnoxious non-monetary trade barriers of any country,' Mr Trump posted online last week. The spat risks undoing years of work in Washington to forge closer links with New Delhi, potentially undermining efforts to prevent a rising titan on the world stage from falling into China's orbit. Broaden your horizons with award-winning British journalism. Try The Telegraph free for 1 month with unlimited access to our award-winning website, exclusive app, money-saving offers and more. Solve the daily Crossword
