Trump’s tariffs are driving a gold rush
If anything is safe from the economic chaos caused by President Donald Trump’s tariffs, it’s probably gold — or at least that’s what investors seem to think.
The price of gold has increased rapidly in the months since Trump took office, surging particularly since his March 2 announcement of a baseline 10 percent tariff on all US imports. This week, it briefly climbed to a record high of more than $3,500 per ounce during day trading, before closing slightly lower than that.
The uncertainty and projected losses caused by those tariffs have sent the stock market spiraling downward, with the S&P 500 falling more than 8 percent in the last month. The tariffs have also scrambled the markets for other traditionally safe investments linked to the US, like Treasury bonds and the US dollar.
US Treasury bonds have seen a major selloff in recent weeks, with yields climbing to alarmingly high levels. (High yields are typically a sign that investors are losing confidence in the US economy.) They spiked again after Trump called Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell a “major loser” in a Truth Social post on Monday. The president has been threatening to fire Powell if he does not lower interest rates, something Powell’s Federal Reserve can’t do without risking higher inflation.
Investors who once stocked up on cash are rethinking that as well. The value of the US dollar hit a three-year low on Monday after Trump’s Truth Social post about Powell, as international fears begin to mount that the president’s haphazard tariff policies could force banks to choose something other than the dollar as the world’s global reserve currency. (Since the post-World War II era, central banks around the world have stashed their financial reserves in US dollars, seeing it as a safe, dependable asset.)
All of that has meant that investors are now flocking to gold, the value of which is not tied to the US economy, because it is a tangible, scarce resource that has value in and of itself. It has historically retained that value, even amid economic crises or periods of high inflation, making it more reliable than bonds, stocks, or dollars. And because the supply of gold is limited, increased demand has meant skyrocketing prices.
The price did come down somewhat to under $3,400 on Tuesday afternoon after Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said in a closed-door investor meeting that the US would have to de-escalate its trade war with China. But it’s still higher than it was even a few weeks ago.
The price doesn’t seem likely to come down significantly further in the near future. Goldman Sachs projects that by the end of 2025, the price will increase to $3,700 or even higher if central banks worldwide purchase an average of 100 tons of gold per month. Central banks had already been on a gold-buying spree coming into 2025, buying more than 1,000 tons of gold annually in recent years, and that pace is expected to pick up in light of recent economic uncertainty.
This isn’t the first time gold prices have seen a major spike. Throughout periods of economic turbulence in recent history, gold has been seen as a tangible safe haven investment that maintains its value.
At the outset of the Covid-19 pandemic, the price of gold jumped from $1,575 in January 2020 to over $2,000 by that summer.
Amid concerns about the stability of the European economy from 2010 to 2012, the price reached a new high of $1,825.
The Great Recession saw the price rise from about $730 in October 2008 to $1,300 two years later.
This time, we’ve seen an even starker increase. And unless Trump and Bessent articulate a drastic shift in their economic vision, gold seems unlikely to lose its luster anytime soon.