Feb 02, 2025, 03:23
"US to slap BRICS with 100% import duties if they try to replace dollar — Trump", reports TASS.
It also reports:
Gold futures with delivery in April 2024 set a new historical record on Comex, a division of the New York Mercantile exchange, and are traded above $2,850 per Troy ounce, according to market data.
- Gold futures record high on Comex — market data
Yet the spot price only managed $2815.93:
Meanwhile, GATA expresses doubts about the narrative:
-- there is a severe shortage of gold -- the metallic kind rather than the paper kind -- in the London market, caused by the desire of bullion banks to ship a lot of metal to the United States before President Trump imposes tariffs on imports of the monetary metals.
There are several problems with this scenario.
First is that gold is not a commodity or consumer good, the things Trump has been talking about subjecting to tariffs, but money in its highest form. Trump wants money to come to the United States for investment and purchase of U.S. production. Tariffs on imports of money make no sense.
If, as seems likely, the U.S. government has gold loan and swap obligations to meet, it would have another reason not to impede imports of monetary metal.
The second problem with the tariff scare scenario is that U.S. bullion banks and traders lately have had no trouble using New York Commodities Exchange futures contracts to obtain gold in London via the "exchange for physical" and "exchange for risk" mechanisms of fulfilling futures obligations. The bullion banks do gold business in both cities and gold can be sold for cash in London and the cash wired back to the United States.
Third, the reports say the Bank of England has been desperately lending metal from its vaults -- presumably its own metal and the metal of other central banks -- to help the bullion banks get metal for shipping to New York. But typically gold lending is a paper transaction in which IOUs, not actual metal, change hands. The IOUs are treated as the real thing but ordinarily the underlying metal never leaves the vault. For several years gold's big trend in central banking has been repatriation of metal out of London and New York as nations don't want to risk having their foreign-exchange assets frozen or confiscated by the United States or its allies. What central banks vaulting gold at the Bank of England these days would be giving permission for their metal to be moved even more distant from their control?
These considerations suggest another explanation for the gold shortage in London.
That is, what if the tariff panic stories are just more disinformation?
- What if the shortage of gold in London isn't a tariff scare but ... a shortage of gold?
This week's CRIMEX gold stocks report shows a big jump from 27,444,488.53 to 31,342,132.55 Troy ounces or about 121 tons in a continuing parabolic curve over the last few weeks. So, they're trying to quell the gold price but some are betting on far higher prices. After all, through 2024 and Jan25, the gold price has seen multiple new all-time hghs, sometimes several in one day. But that just means they're holding it back even as they're fighting a rear-guard action and in retreat.
I've commented on this forum about the HUGE increase in CRIMEX stocks in 2020 but I've never seen any comment by GATA about it. Having sumped gold to quell the price since then, they now appear to have embarked on a different policy.
And instead of a free market, where the price would rise until demand and supply were in balance:
London's bullion market is under strain. A surge in gold shipments to the U.S. has left traders scrambling to borrow from central banks, with wait times at the Bank of England stretching from days to weeks.
- LBMA Can't Deliver Gold as Supply-Chain Breaks
The above article is also skeptical about the tariff narrative.
The economists Paul Brodsky and Lee Quaintance hypothesized 13 years ago that central banks already were planning redistribution of official gold reserves as the prerequisite for devaluing their currencies, inflating their debts away, and coming out ahead with gold revaluation:
https://www.gata.org/node/11373
Already, the propaganda is claiming the ECB will cut a three times this year. The last time the ECB and poodle central bank cut, they both then reported an uptick in inflation. The ECB hs just cut again but Bloomberg BS reports:
"ECB Faces Sticky Prices That Dent Its Case for Cuts, Poll Shows"
even as it also reports:
"ECB Cut All But Certain With Price Goal in View: Decision Guide"
whilst the FED holds:
"Powell Signals Fed on Hold as Trump’s Economic Policies Take Shape"
So yet again, it looks like an attempt to avoid competing with the "worthless paper" USD.
As the EU threatens to sanction russian fertilisers, the gangster-run, thieved prison-state of Kanada is threatening retalitory tariffs on Great Satan imports. So it's no longer just a bifurcation of World trade but an all-round move to zero trade imbalances as has been discussed for some years now. That means the end of dollar hegemony and almost certainly a return to a gold standard. But they don't want a panic. The EU directive to remove VAT on gold in 1999 and the Great Satan's thieved states gradually doing similar makes precious metals de facto money especially as unlike paper funny-money they're commodities so a store of value. Melon Husk has now echoed the pothead war criminal, saying the amerikan sheeple have to "live within our means".
Jamie Dimon has already warned of "stagflation" and there's already a "cost of living crisis". But tariffs will hit the sheeple the hardest with higher prices, especially if that comes with higher interest rates too.
President Donald Trump’s new trade levies against China, Canada and Mexico include a broadside against e-commerce, with apparent plans to extinguish a long-held tariff exemption for packages worth less than $800.
- Trump Tariffs Target Loophole Used by Chinese Online Retailers
This is a move to balancing the Great Satan's trade deficit, which in turn marks the end of the "exorbitant privilege" of dollar hegemony with the inherently fraudulent scam of only the Great Satan (and at Genoa the poodle too) being able to print the jew-confetti out of thin-air that other nations had to hold as their FX reserves. The wars cost tens of millions of lives each and instead of WW1 being the "war to end all wars" it heralded the bloodiest century in all of history. Having defualted on gold in 1971 in the biggest default in all of history, the petrodollar was then backed by other nations' oil. But the abandonment of fossil fuels has put paid to that too. If the Great Satan can't parasite off the rest of the World, then dollar hegemony is dead. Gold bugs are expecting a revaluation of gold against the "worthless paper" USD. This would require a HUGE revaluation. They expect it soon because the fiscal, rather than trade, deficits are unsustainable and out of control. The tariff policy is more gradual; to raise prices of goods instead but could be a red-herring before a HUGE gold revaluation..
The poodle state has long talked about its "balance of trade deficit" before implementing Brexit with the EU; the poodle-state's largest trading partner.
Sensing such a change, Temu has already been shipping more inventory in bulk to the US and paying tariffs to have it stored in warehouses near big cities to narrow delivery times.
And I've just bought off Aliexpress, an item which is shipped from Poodleville. This is a feature which has appeared recently on its website.
Trump’s new tariffs to take effect at 12:01 am New York time on Tuesday and are an effort to punish Canada, Mexico and China for what the US president says is a failure to crack down on flows of fentanyl and illegal immigrants across US borders.
The common denominator between Mexico, China and the gangster-run, thieved prison-state of Kanada is not fentanyl or undocumented migrants, but that they're the Great Satan's three biggest trading partners after the EU as a bloc. Of course, war criminal, The Donald, can't say that, so as a sop to China he's spouting absurd claptrap instead, which is tacit admission that accusations about fentanyl from China were nonsense all along. It offered the excuse to use the International Emergency Economic Powers Act to implement the illegal section 232 tariffs (raising questions on how permanent they are).
Trump also hinted at additional tariffs on EU products, citing poor treatment of the United States, though details remain vague. The president said he “absolutely” would impose tariffs on their shipments to the United States. “We are treated so badly: They don’t take our cars, they don’t take our farm products; essentially, they don’t take almost anything. And we have a tremendous deficit with the European Union. So, we’ll be doing something very substantial with the European Union,” he said.
. . .
Only 1.5% of migrants apprehended by U.S. Customs and Border Protection in the 2024 fiscal year and 0.2% of fentanyl seized at U.S. borders came from Canada.
- Trump Officially Signs Three Executive Orders Imposing 25% Tariffs on Canada and Mexico, 10% Tariffs on China
How would that work, considering the EU vassals are buying Lucifer Natural Gas at three times the price amerikan corporations are paying?
As a guage of how big this is:
After five centuries of the poodle empire of plundering and then starting both World Wars to parasite off the rest of the planet with jew-confetti, the poodle state has joined the Great Satan in an epidemic of shop-lifting. "Shops 'at breaking point' as thefts and abuse rocket", reports the propagandistic Times of Cesspit London.
I've asked a shop assistant about it and she said it had gotten out of control. I've put 100% of my savings in gold two decades ago, so I'm now financially secure and don't need to shop-lift, though neither did Anthony Worral-Thompson.
It won't be long until the Anglos start eating one another, just as they did the "first time the mail-boat was a day late".
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