President Trump makes new comments on tariffs against EU, Mexican, and Canadian imports, sending crude oil and stock markets lower, while the Peso and Loonie see gains.
- The major event of the past day was President Trump’s pronouncements on his tariff plans, which included some contradictory statements that added to general uncertainty:
- The 25% tariff on imports from Mexico and Canada has been delayed and will be imposed on 2nd April. The Mexican Peso and Canadian Dollar both gained on this news, and many any analysts are starting to take the view that this means that these tariffs will probably not happen at all, even though Trump said it would.
- A 25% tariff will be imposed on imports from the EU. Trump said the EU was formed “to screw the USA”. Interestingly, this has only sent the Euro a little bit lower against the USD, suggesting that markets do not really believe that such tariffs will ever be imposed, assuming this is just a negotiation which will be resolved.
- Markets have reacted with a continuation of falls in commodities such as WTI Crude Oil, which traded at a new 2025 well below $70 per barrel. Stock markets also saw some losses, although recent hours have seen a small recovery.
- Bitcoin is continuing to react negatively to the risk-off environment, breaking below the round number at $83,000 to trade at its lowest price in three months. Although the price has recovered somewhat in recent hours, these are bearish signs for Bitcoin, but the bullish bounce near the support level at $81,756 was quite strong so this low could hold for a while.
- In the Forex market, there was little movement in today’s Tokyo session. Within this asset class, the Japanese Yen stands out as an interesting outlier as the Bank of Japan now has a path to conduct divergent rate hikes over the course of 2025, which could push the USD/JPY currency pair and other Yen crosses to fresh lows, giving trend and momentum traders something to watch. Earlier, Japan’s top currency diplomat Mimura made clear that he sees no problem with the recent appreciation by the Japanese Yen, stating that it should not harm recent positive economic data, potentially justifying further rate hikes. The Yen remains strong and against the USD is trading very close to breaking below a multi-month low.
- Gold is holding up relatively well despite general selloffs in commodities, strongly outperforming Silver despite the typical strongly positive correlation between the two precious metals. However, it is now trading below the round number at $2,900 and may well make a further decline. Below $2,850 institutional longs will begin to see major liquidations.
- There will be two major data releases today in the USA:
- Preliminary GDP, which is expected to show annualized GDP growth holding steady at 2.3%.
- Unemployment Claims
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