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Home > Gold > AGE's Gold Commentary

AGE Gold Commentary is our regular report analyzing trends in precious metals and rare coins. We monitor domestic and international markets and extrapolate from our 30 years in metals to place current events into a hard asset perspective. View archives.


5/19/2025: Why China is dominating the gold market

Source:

Greetings!

China continues to dominate gold price activity. When President Trump imposed exclusionary tariffs of 145% on China, spooked Chinese investors overran the gold market, driving gold to $3,500 per ounce, mostly in overnight trading in the Asian market.

When those tariffs were negotiated down to a more reasonable—but still historically high—30% last week, gold eased. Once again, the market was driven by overnight Asian trading. Today, despite tariff tensions easing and some short-term profit taking, gold is holding most of its recent gains.

What isn’t holding steady is the projected path of US debt. President Trump’s "big, beautiful bill" is set to increase the debt ceiling by $4 to $5 trillion to provide unfunded tax cuts, pushing the US national debt above $40 trillion. This fiscal shift has caused Moody’s, a credit rating agency, to downgrade US debt from AAA to AA1.

Bond yields surged higher as the market learned of the size of the debt ceiling increase, pushing up the cost of financing for everyday Americans. Investors are clearly demanding higher return for the increasing risk that this new surge in US debt would bring to owning US Treasurys.

Remember, more than $765 billion in US Treasury debt is owned by China, surpassed only by Japan and the UK among foreign powers.

Meanwhile, tariff-driven price increases are finally reaching our shores. Rising cost inputs are squeezing corporate profits as the economy weakens. US companies are struggling to pass on higher costs to consumers, which could lead to cost-cutting layoffs.

All of this creates the possibility of a self-reinforcing downward cycle in the US economy, pushing unemployment sharply higher in the coming months. And all this is bullish for gold.

So please join me as I unpack these important developments in this new edition of AGE Gold Commentary.

You can also view this video on the AGE YouTube channel, which includes a transcript.

Sincerely,

Dana Samuelson
President

  

Metal Ask      Change
Gold $3,455.28           Price Change Up Arrow $31.19
Silver $39.89           Price Change Up Arrow $0.68
Platinum $1,383.09           Price Change Up Arrow $6.83
Palladium $1,130.31           Price Change Down Arrow $-1.51
In US Dollars