by Ronan Manly, BullionStar:
With less than two months until his inauguration on 20 January 2025, US president-elect Donald Trump is ramping up the rhetoric on tariff threats to unprecedented levels – even by his own “all guns blazing” standards.
In the space of less than two weeks, Trump has lost no time in firing off import tariff threats against China, Canada, Mexico, and all nine member countries of BRICS (a grouping which represents 45% of the world’s population). In doing so, Trump is rekindling fears of global trade wars and creating global economic uncertainty.
TRUTH LIVES on at https://sgtreport.tv/
This global economic uncertainty coupled with the expected increase in inflation caused by probable trade wars will have serious consequences for global financial markets, but will likely be a boon for precious metals prices, given the role of gold and as universal safe-haven assets and traditional inflation hedges.
Trump’s Threatening Tariffs
In a post on his Truth Social media platform on the evening of 25 November, Trump targeted Canada and Mexico with the threat of a 25% tariff on all of their products entering the US. Trump crafted his threats using the pretext of illegal immigrants and the drug fentanyl entering the US from Mexico and China, however this is just a convenient political justification for the real motive behind tariff threats and tariffs, which is economic leverage in upcoming trade negotiations.
In a second post on Truth Social published at the exact same time on 25 November, Trump then turned his attention and threatened China with additional 10% import tariffs on all Chinese good coming into the US. Again he tied these tariffs to the pretext of the drug fentanyl coming into the US from China, when this is just political cover for the real motive behind the tariffs, which is economic leverage on upcoming ‘Phase 2’ trade negotiations with China.
Then stunningly, on 30 November, Trump upped the ante on tariffs even more by moving beyond a focus on Canada, Mexico and a standalone China, when he again on Truth Social targeted the entire BRICS group of countries with the threat of 100% tariffs on goods imported into the US from BRICS countries, if BRICS doesn’t back down on creating a BRICS currency or ‘any other currency’ (which would include the gold-backed currency and settlement mechanism ideas which BRICS has been discussing).
