The U.S. government unleashed turmoil in the gold market on Friday, after the customs agency ruled that some of the most widely used gold bars would be subject to tariffs, contrary to traders’ expectations.
Call it a cloud with a gold lining. Prices for gold futures in New York jumped to a record high, detaching from the global benchmark price set in London, as traders tried to make sense of the effect of tariffs on gold moved into the United States.
The ruling, by U.S. Customs and Border Protection, said that the tariffs that President Trump recently imposed would apply to 100-ounce and one-kilogram gold bars. That means that bars of that weight from Switzerland, a gold refining hub, face a 39 percent levy.
Other forms of gold bullion are exempt from Mr. Trump’s tariffs, which before the ruling many traders had assumed applied to all gold imports. Gold in non-jewelry form is rarely, if ever, subjected to tariffs since it is seen as a store of value rather than a product. The ruling was first reported by The Financial Times.
A White House official said that Mr. Trump planned to issue an executive order soon clarifying what he described as misinformation about tariffs on gold bars and other specialty products. The official did not immediately explain what the White House considered misinformation.
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