(Kitco News) – U.S. President Donald Trump announced sweeping new global tariffs on Wednesday afternoon, in a move that roiled markets and sent gold and silver prices to session highs.
”For decades, our country has been looted, pillage, raped, and plundered by nations near and far, both friend and foe alike,” Trump said in his White House address shortly after the North American market close. “American steel workers, auto workers, farmers, and skilled craftsmen – we have a lot of them here with us today – they really suffered gravely. They watched and anguish as foreign leaders have stolen our jobs, foreign cheaters have ransacked our factories, and foreign scavengers have torn apart our once beautiful American dream.”
“In a few moments, I will sign a historic executive order instituting reciprocal tariffs on countries throughout the world,” he said. “This is one of the most important days, in my opinion, in American history. It's our declaration of economic independence.”
Trump said that the revenue from the new tariffs will generate “trillions and trillions of dollars” to reduce taxes and pay down the national debt. “With today's action, we are finally going to be able to make America great again, greater than ever before,” he said.
The President claimed that nations had placed massive tariffs on American products and created non-monetary barriers that harmed U.S. industries. “They manipulated their currencies, subsidized their exports, stole our intellectual property, imposed exorbitant [value-added] taxes to disadvantage our products, adopted unfair rules and technical standards, and created filthy pollution havens.”
“ Foreign nations will finally be asked to pay for the privilege of access to our market, the biggest market in the world,” he said.
Gold prices whipsawed during Trump’s remarks, with spot gold oscillating between $3,106 and $3,145 per ounce before stabilizing in a range between $3,127 and $3,138 per ounce toward the end of the speech.
Silver prices also caught a strong bid during the tariff announcement, with spot silver shooting to a session high of $34.154 at 4:30 pm EDT before pulling back to support near $33.890 per ounce.
Chris Zaccarelli, Chief Investment Officer for Northlight Asset Management, said the President's announcement dashed the market's earlier optimism about the size and scale of tariffs.
"The roller coaster ride continues as the initial leaks were positive (only 10% baseline tariffs), but then the details were released and they were far worse than expected (24-49% outside of the EU and UK)," he told Kitco News. "Markets are going to continue to struggle with the speed at which tariff details change as well as the ultimate result of the tariffs themselves."
"The silver lining for investors could be that this is only a starting point for negotiations with other countries and ultimately tariff rates will come down across the board," Zaccarelli added, "but for now, traders are shooting first and asking questions later."
