US banking giant JPMorgan plans to deliver $4bn of gold bullion weighing more than 937 tons to New York this month, before an anticipated escalation of Donald Trump’s trade-rebalancing-tariff moves planned for Saturday.
The US bank, the world’s biggest bullion dealer, said it would deliver the hefty raw material, weighed as 30m troy ounces of gold, or 1.875m lbs, against contracts that will expire in February.
The delivery comes as the price of gold has surged to $2,813 per ounce, and the delivery notices are the second largest ever in bourse data going back to 1994, according to Bloomberg.
The outlet has also reported that tariff-war fears have made it profitable to fly silver into the US – a commodity that typically is transported by ship because it is considered too cheap and bulky to justify the costs.
The gold shipment is just one of a series of signals that Trump’s tariff threats are reshaping global trade, which many fear could exacerbate inflation in the US and test the patience of allies.
Trump is expected to move ahead with plans on Saturday to impose 25% tariffs on Mexico and Canada and a 10% levy on China. The three countries account for almost half of the total volume of US imports. The US president has hinted at a reprieve for Mexico and Canada if they move against undocumented immigrants and illegal drugs coming across their borders into the US.
Before an expected press conference at Mar-a-Lago in Palm Beach, Florida, on Saturday, Trump said he planned to impose new tariffs on imports of computer chips, pharmaceuticals, steel, aluminum, copper, oil and gas as soon as mid-February.
“That’ll happen fairly soon,” he told reporters in the Oval Office, saying he also wants to hike tariffs on the European Union, which has “treated us so horribly”. Trump didn’t specify the European behaviors or actions he was referring to, but the tariff threats are a part of a pressure-package on Europe to increase domestic defense spending.
On Friday, Trump dismissed concerns that increased US import tariffs could increase domestic US inflation and disrupt global supply chains. Trump said “there could be some temporary, short-term disruption and people will understand that”.
“The tariffs are going to make us very rich and very strong,” he added.
US industries, including the oil and auto sectors, have lobbied the new administration for tariff exemptions, while Canada and Mexico have prepared a list of retaliatory measures to hit US products.
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Trump has repeatedly said “tariff” is among his favorite words and sees import duties as a way to finance the extension of his first-term tax cuts that are due to expire in 2026.
The non-partisan congressional budget office has put the cost of extending the 2017 tax cuts at $4.6tn over 10 years, and a 25% tariff on the more than $900bn in annual imports from Canada and Mexico would raise roughly $225bn annually or $2.3tn over a decade if they had no impact on trade, according to Bloomberg.
On Friday, Karoline Leavitt, the White House press secretary, dismissed a report that Trump might delay the Mexico, Canada and China tariffs, just as a threatened tariff war with Colombia over the country’s acceptance of US immigrant deportation flights escalated and diminished over the space of several hours last weekend.
“I saw that report, and it is false,” Leavitt told reporters. “I was just with the president in the Oval Office.”
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