AGE Daily Gold Update

AGE Daily Gold Update presents a recap on today's action in the precious metals markets. View archives.

3/6/2025: Gold and silver steady as tariff uncertainty roils the dollar, equities, and jobs

Source: Dana Samuelson, American Gold Exchange

Austin — Gold and silver were little changed today in New York trading, but a steady stream of tariff policy clarifications has continued to unnerve the dollar and equities markets this week.

Today the Trump administration exempted Mexico from the 25% tariff on any goods and services from Mexico that were part of the North American USMCA agreement. USMCA replaced NAFTA under the first Trump administration. Both Canada and Mexico have recently accused the Trump administration of violating the USMCA by imposing new, 25% blanket tariffs this week.

The exemption for Mexico expires on April 2nd when a comprehensive tariff policy is expected to be announced. No similar USMCA exemption has been announced for Canada. President Trump did spare carmakers in both Mexico and Canada from 25% tariffs for one month yesterday.

At the equities market close the DOW was down 1.00%, the S&P 500 was off 1.78% and the NASDAQ was down 2.61%. The dollar, which fell to as low as 103.77 on the US dollar index earlier in the day, clawed back most of its losses back up to 104.16, for a 0.13% loss on the US dollar index. Last Friday the US dollar index, which measures the value of the dollar against a basket of foreign currencies peaked at 107.62 on the US dollar index.

The outplacement firm Challenger, Gray and Christmas reported that US employers eliminated 172,017 employees in February, the highest monthly loss of jobs since July 2020. About one third of these jobs, 62,242, came from the federal government due to Elon Musk’s DOGE efforts. Government contract cancellations are expected to ripple through into the private sector more forcefully in the coming months, potentially creating a lay off domino effect.

Tomorrow’s highly anticipated BLS non-farms payroll report for February will not reflect many of these most recent job losses. The BLS employment survey February data collection ended the second week of February, before most of the latest DOGE job cuts were made.

At the New York spot close: gold added $1.30 to $2916.60; silver gained $0.20 to $33.06; platinum eased $0.90 higher to $967.30; and palladium rose to $945.60.