Gold prices rebound on dollar weakness
Spot gold was up 0.3% to $3,336.39 per ounce, as of 1211 GMT. The precious metal is up about 1.9% this week. US gold futures gained 0.1% to $3,346.60.
The dollar index slipped 0.2% and was on track for a second week of decline, making gold less expensive for other currency holders. 'The apprehension about the fiscal situation in the US (after Trump's sweeping tax-cut bill passed Congress) and the lingering uncertainty over the approaching July 9 deadline for the tariff issue has boosted safe-haven demand,' said Ricardo Evangelista, senior analyst at brokerage firm ActivTrades.
Trump announced that Washington will start sending letters to countries on Friday, marking a shift from earlier plans for individual trade deals. On April 2, he announced reciprocal tariffs of 10%-50%, but later reduced most to 10% until July 9 to allow for negotiations.
Meanwhile, Trump's tax-cut legislation cleared its final hurdle in Congress on Thursday, making his 2017 cuts permanent, funding his immigration crackdown and adding new tax breaks promised during Trump's 2024 campaign.
Data showed US job growth was unexpectedly solid in June, but nearly half of the increase in nonfarm payrolls came from the government sector, with private industry gains being the smallest in eight months as businesses battled rising economic headwinds.
'The latest US payroll data supports the case of a slowdown of the economy, but no standstill, slowing the pressure on the Fed to cut interest rates anytime soon,' said UBS commodity analyst Giovanni Staunovo.
Elsewhere, spot silver edged 0.2% higher to $36.9 per ounce and palladium eased 0.1% to $1,135.79. Platinum rose 1.5% to $1,387.54 per ounce and was heading for its fifth straight week of gains.
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Business Recorder
2 hours ago
- Business Recorder
Investors head into Trump tariff deadline benumbed and blase
SINGAPORE/NEW YORK: Global investors are heading into U.S. President Donald Trump's Wednesday deadline for trade tariffs palpably unexcited and prepared for a range of benign scenarios that they believe are already priced in. Just days before the end of a 90-day pause he announced on his April 2 'Liberation Day' tariffs, Trump said the first batch of letters outlining the tariff levels they would face on exports to the United States would be sent to 12 countries on Monday. Investors who have been tracking this date for months expect more details to emerge in the coming days and protracted uncertainty too, anticipating Trump will not be able to complete deals with all of America's trading partners in the coming week. And they are not overly concerned. 'The market has gotten much more comfortable, more sanguine, when it comes to tariff news,' said Jeff Blazek, co-chief investment officer of multi-asset at Neuberger Berman in New York. 'The markets think that there is enough 'squishiness' in the deadlines – absent any major surprise – to not be too unsettled by more tariff news and believe that the worst-case scenarios are off the table now.' Both the tariff levels and effective dates have become moving targets. Trump said on Friday that tariffs ranging up to 70% could go into effect on August 1, levels far higher than the 10%-50% range he announced in April. So far, the U.S. administration has a limited deal with Britain and an in-principle agreement with Vietnam. Deals that had been anticipated with India and Japan have failed to materialize, and there have been setbacks in talks with the European Union. World stocks are meanwhile at record highs, up 11% since April 2. They fell 14% in three trading sessions after that announcement but have since rallied 24%. 'If Liberation Day was the earthquake, the tariff letters will be the aftershocks. They won't quite have the same impact on markets even if they are higher than the earlier 10%,' said Rong Ren Goh, a portfolio manager in the fixed income team at Eastspring Investments in Singapore. 'This financial system is so inundated with liquidity that it is hard to cash up or delever at the risk of lagging the markets, with April serving as a painful reminder for many who derisked and were then forced to chase the relentless recovery in the subsequent weeks.' Taxes and the FED Investors have also been distracted by weeks of wrangling in Congress over Trump's massive tax and spending package, which he signed into law on Friday. Stock markets have celebrated the passage of the bill, which makes Trump's 2017 tax cuts permanent, while bond investors are wary the measures could add more than $3 trillion to the nation's $36.2 trillion debt. The S&P 500 and Nasdaq indexes closed at record highs on Friday, notching a third week of gains. Europe's STOXX 600 benchmark is up 9% in three months. Musk announces forming of 'America Party' in further break from Trump But the risks of tariff-related inflation have weighed on U.S. Treasuries and the dollar, and jostled expectations for Federal Reserve policy. Rate futures show traders no longer expect a Fed rate cut this month and are pricing in a total of just two quarter-point reductions by year-end. The dollar has suffered a knock to its haven reputation from the dithering on tariffs. The dollar index , which reflects the U.S. currency's performance against a basket of six others, has had its worst first half of the year since 1973, declining some 11%. It has fallen by 6.6% since April 2 alone. 'The markets are discounting a return to tariff levels of 35%, 40% or higher, and anticipating an across-the-board level of 10% or so,' said John Pantekidis, chief investment officer at TwinFocus in Boston. Pantekidis is cautiously optimistic about the outlook for U.S. stocks this year, but the one variable he is watching closely is interest rate levels. For now he expects to see interest rates dip in the second half, 'but if the bond market worries about the impact of the bill and rates go up, that's a different scenario.'
Express Tribune
3 hours ago
- Express Tribune
The big cruel ‘beauty' of Trump's bill
In a cruel twist of irony, America's Independence Day is being celebrated with the largest upward transfer of wealth in the country's history. By signing the so-called 'Big Beautiful Bill' into law on July 4, President Donald Trump has turned Robin Hood into a bogeyman – and made the rich the rightful folk heroes. With the sweeping tax-and-spending package, Trump has unleashed a legislative juggernaut that brings Karl Marx's warning into brutal focus: 'Accumulation of wealth at one pole is, therefore, at the same time accumulation of misery at the opposite pole.' The bill robs the bottom 90 per cent of Americans of around $700 per household, while funnelling over $6,000 into the pockets of the wealthiest fifth, engineering misery on an industrial scale. With Yale's Budget Lab and the Congressional Budget Office projecting a $3.4 trillion hole in the federal budget over the next decade – before counting interest – it is an ideological project in plutocratic redistribution. In a staged heist against the social safety net, Medicaid, SNAP, clean energy credits and even lifesaving foreign aid are set to become collateral damage in a grand design to enrich the few and abandon the rest. It is a dagger at the heart of America's social contract. Or, in Bernie Sanders' remarks on the floor of the Senate: 'It is the most dangerous piece of legislation in the modern history of our country.' 'It is a gift to the billionaire class, while causing massive pain for low-income and working-class Americans. Actually though, M. President, I'm wrong. This is not a gift to the billionaire class. They paid for it,' he quipped. In Arkansas alone, more than 100,000 people stand to lose their Medicaid coverage. Food stamp recipients will now face stiffer work requirements, a bitter irony at a time when grocery bills are soaring and rural job markets remain fragile. Across the country, the implications are chilling. Already struggling rural hospitals may face accelerated shutdowns. Families living paycheck to paycheck will be squeezed even harder. At the same time, tax cuts for billionaires are made permanent, fossil fuel subsidies are revived with a vengeance and the deficit balloons by an additional $3.5 trillion. Who wins and who loses? Independent analyses from the CBO and the Joint Committee on Taxation (JCT) show that the bill will kick 16 million people off their health insurance, gut nutrition programmes and make college even harder to afford — all to bankroll massive tax cuts for the wealthiest Americans. The bill adds a whopping $3 trillion to the national debt, setting the stage for long-term economic drag and a grim inheritance for younger generations. Households making under $23,000 will lose around $1,600 annually, mostly from Medicaid and SNAP cuts, nearly 4% of their total income. Families earning under $55,000 a year will see a net loss in resources. Meanwhile, the middle class gets table scraps, a meagre 0.5–0.8% gain, barely enough to offset rising living costs. At the top, it's raining gold. Households making over $700,000 will gain $12,000 a year, not counting estate tax windfalls. Meanwhile, the top 10% rake in 68% of the bill's total benefits. Those earning over $500,000 will receive a $168 billion tax cut in 2027 alone while people making over $1 million will see a $93.6 billion tax windfall that same year. For the lowest earners, the pain is twofold: many will actually see tax increases, with those making less than $15,000 a year facing a 12% hike in 2027, ballooning to 73% by 2033 once temporary credits expire. Even crueller than the 2017 Tax Cuts and Jobs Act, the grandly-titled bill doles out nearly double the tax break to millionaires while stripping aid from those who need it most. In fact, TCJA at least gave modest cuts to low-income earners, but the "beauty" of Trump's latest attack lies in its spectacular theft. Generational theft The long-term hit is generational. Penn Wharton's model finds that a 40-year-old median-income earner will lose $7,500 over a lifetime under the bill. However, a 70-year-old with the same income will be $17,500 richer. In other words, the American Dream has been restructured into a senior savings plan, just hang in there till retirement and hope capitalism does not kill you first. For the young, the pursuit of happiness now comes with a warning label: not applicable during your lifetime. In a nutshell, the bill is a ledger of who matters and who does not in Trump's America. The arithmetic is brutally simple: if you're a CEO, hedge fund manager or a defence contractor, your stock just went up. However, if you are a working-class parent, a disabled veteran, a retiree or a single mother in rural Arkansas, you're collateral damage in a cynical calculation. While older, higher-income Americans stand to gain in the short term through generous tax breaks, younger workers and future generations are left footing the bill, both figuratively and literally. Because younger earners are typically in lower tax brackets, they benefit the least from income tax cuts. At the same time, they are disproportionately exposed to deep cuts in Medicaid and student aid — two critical lifelines for young families and students. Medicaid now covers four in ten hospital births in the US, meaning today's cuts are tomorrow's childhood health crises. As Jessica Riedl of the conservative Manhattan Institute puts it, even from the right: 'In the short term, the benefits are certainly tilted towards higher earners, which is often a good proxy for age.' However, the heaviest blow comes in the form of long-term debt. The bill adds $3 trillion to the national debt, which economists predict will push interest rates higher and eat away at future federal budgets, squeezing out investment in education, infrastructure and social services. 'There is an obvious intergenerational transfer here,' says John Ricco of the Yale Budget Lab, which estimates that by 2055, when today's newborns turn 30, the average annual mortgage will cost $4,000 more because of the bill's impact on interest rates. 'Making America white again' Moreover, the bill's border provisions read like the fevered dreams of a security‑state lobbyist. ICE's budget balloons by an order of magnitude, rippling from roughly $10 billion today to over $100 billion in a few short years. Funding for walls, detention facilities and mass deportations soars, reflecting a dark fusion of nationalist spectacle and capitalist discipline. Immigrants, refugees and asylum‑seekers become pawns in a broader project of social control, as the state draws lines in sand and steel across its own land. The Pentagon budget is padded by another $150 billion, ICE gets tens of billions for deportations and even a private border-enforcement army and massive wall project are shoehorned in. In short, if $1 is cut from Medicaid, $1.50 flies to police and walls. As Washington Monthly notes, the bill 'lavishes funding on ICE to raise a private army and set up detention camps'. The movement 'is primarily about… 'owning the libs,' 'Making America White Again,' and cruelty against the marginalised'. Public opinion polls tell the rest of the story: close to half of Americans – 49 per cent – oppose the Big Beautiful Bill, while only 29 per cent support it. Even within Republican ranks, fiscal hawks and swing‑district representatives bristled at the eye‑popping deficits and social carnage baked into the legislation. Three‑headed hydra of class warfare From a leftist vantage point, the Big Beautiful Bill is a three‑headed hydra of class warfare, eco‑fascism and bio‑political abandonment. It rebrands austerity as patriotism, casting the poor as 'undeserving' parasites even as it showers the wealthy with boons. By shredding Medicaid, SNAP, and foreign‑aid programs, lawmakers legislate life‑and‑death outcomes for the poor, the elderly, children abroad and immunocompromised Americans alike. Green betrayal Climate leftists see the bill as an eco‑fascist manifesto: a blueprint for resource control through environmental destruction, with the state's coercive machinery gearing up to enforce a fossil‑fuel future at gunpoint. Perhaps the ugliest manifestation of the 'beautiful bill' is in its astonishing show of capitalism's climate death drive, an embrace of catastrophe for private profit, where planetary care is too high a price to pay. The bill's architects also saw fit to annihilate the scaffolding of the clean‑energy transition. With the stroke of a pen, the EV tax credit that buoyed nascent electric‑vehicle markets vanishes, wind and solar developers find their pipeline choked off and carbon‑capture investments are relegated to the dustbin. Environmental finance specialists forecast the loss of up to 250,000 clean‑energy jobs, even as household electricity bills spike by double digits. In effect, the legislation slams on the brakes of climate progress while flooring the accelerator on fossil‑fuel extraction – an eco‑dead end if there ever was one. The bill quietly scraps much of the Biden administration's clean-energy agenda. Solar and wind tax credits are repealed, even as fossil fuel subsidies persist. Analysts warn that by punishing solar and wind generation the law will devastate energy grids in red states like Texas. The bill is an eco-political undoing: the countryside continues to flood and burn while lawmakers dismantle the very buffers — renewables, efficiency programs and green jobs – that could soften the blow. Instead of weaning us off coal and oil, Congress doubles down on drilling and emissions, casting our children as future sacrifices. The irony is cruel: at a moment of record wildfires and hurricanes, politicians fetishize fossil fuel profits. By design, the working forests and windmills of tomorrow become victims to drive short-term windfall. The bill's very 'beauty' is in its ritualised cruelty. It taps into a perverse collective glee, inviting supporters to revel in the punishment of the 'lazy' and 'undeserving,' all while the architects of the legislation themselves benefit. The broader lesson is clear: the Big Beautiful Bill is the Empire striking back (internally, on its own unwanted), wielding fiscal hammers and regulatory scalpel alike to carve out a new world order – one where the poor are expendable, the planet dispensable and the state an instrument of predatory elites. It is a monstrous legislative conflation of class warfare, climate sabotage and state violence – an apex of neoliberal authoritarianism.
Business Recorder
4 hours ago
- Business Recorder
Canada could financially back aluminum producers if 50% U.S. tariffs persist, trade group says
MONTREAL: Canada has discussed offering financial support to large aluminum producers like Rio Tinto impacted by a U.S.-led trade war, in the event that Washington's 50% tariff on imports of the metal persist in the medium term, the CEO of a key industry trade group said on Saturday. Aluminium Association of Canada CEO Jean Simard told Reuters in an interview that the early talks could help the sector in the event that Ottawa is unable to reach a planned deal with its key trading partner by July 21. 'It's part of a larger discussion where everything is on the table,' Simard said, adding that no decision has been reached. Canada recently canceled a digital service tax on U.S. technology companies in order to preserve trade talks with U.S. President Donald Trump, but another irritant remains in the ongoing negotiations. While the major aluminum producers operating in Canada do not have liquidity problems, Simard said, a 50% U.S. tariff on aluminum imports would inevitably have an impact on finances if it continues longer term. He added that with the 50% tariff in effect since June 4, it's normal that there are discussions about the impact on businesses' cash flow if the situation continues. Around half of all aluminum used in the U.S. is imported, with the vast majority coming from Canada. Simard's comments follow media reports late Friday in which federal industry minister Mélanie Joly said the government is having conversations with Rio Tinto about providing financial assistance due to the crushing U.S. tariffs. Some Japan buyers agree to pay Q3 aluminium premium of $108/T Rio Tinto declined comment on Saturday. A spokesperson for Joly's office said in a statement that Ottawa is in 'active conversations' on how it can best support Canada's aluminum industry in the context of unjustified American tariffs, with the goal to support increased investment in the sector. U.S. President Donald Trump doubled tariffs on steel and aluminum imports to 50% last month, stepping up pressure on global steel producers and deepening his trade war, to support domestic production of the vital materials for construction.
