Trump live: Gold prices begin to slip after hitting record highs due to tariff inflation fears

Gold prices are down slightly at the start of trading today, but are still up 11 per cent over the month and a whopping 40 per cent over 12 months.

Those are big gains for what is seen as a ‘safe’ commodity, so why have we seen two record highs this week?

It’s exactly because of that safe status, amid the current global economic turmoil.

Investors have been grappling with worries over the escalating trade war between the United States and China, which intensified after both economies imposed tit-for-tat tariffs.

Uncertainties over higher tariffs – announced, introduced, and then quickly paused last week – have also caused market jitters.

Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni is meeting with President Donald Trump later today, joining the procession of visits to the White House from U.S. trading partners hoping for better deals on tariffs.

Meloni is hoping to convince Trump that a “zero for zero” trade deal with the EU is better than the planned 20 percent tariffs on the bloc’s exports.

“Most certainly, I am well aware of what I represent, and what I am defending,” Meloni said this week in Rome.

The EU Commission has official authority over the bloc’s trade negotiations, but so far talks between the EU and the U.S. administration have seen little movement on the American side.

Fabian Zuleeg, chief economist at the European Policey Center, told AP that Meloni had “a very delicate mission” ahead of her.

“There is the whole trade agenda, and while she’s not officially negotiating, we know that Trump likes to have this kind of informal exchange, which in a sense is a negotiation. So it’s a lot on her plate.”

Global share markets fell on Wednesday amid ongoing tariff uncertainty and due to news of U.S. restrictions on chip sales.

Federal Reserve chair Jerome Powell said the central bank would take a wait-and-see approach on interest rates, while warning high tariffs would likely cause “high inflation and slower growth”.

The Dow Jones Industrial Average fell 1.7 percent by close on Wednesday, the S&P 500 dropped 2.2 percent, and the tech-heavy Nasdaq Composite slumped 3.1 percent.

But the uncertainties continued to draw investors to gold, which rose to $3,320.90 an ounce at close on Wednesday, up from $3,220.50.

Australian bank ANZ on Wednesday updated its forecast for gold to hit $3,600 an ounce by December, saying safe-haven demand for the asset would accelerate.

In a special White House meeting, Donald Trump comforted Patty Morin, whose daughter was raped and murdered while out hiking. Her killer, Victor Martinez-Hernandez, a fugitive from El Salvador, was convicted of the crime.

Trump invited Mrs Morin to the White House as part of his push to defend his strict deportation policies.

Donald Trump has lashed out at the country’s courts saying they ‘hate’ him.

The spray comes after federal judge James Boasberg said in a ruling yesterday that the presidents administration could be held in criminal contempt for ignoring a court order to turn planes carrying Venezuelan immigrants back to the U.S.

Those alleged Venezuelan gang members were instead sent to a brutal El Salvadoran prison, under the president’s use of a wartime law.

In a ruling yesterday Boasberg said the government’s failure to return those flights demonstrates “a willful disregard” that is “sufficient for the Court to conclude that probable cause exists to find the Government in criminal contempt.”

The same day, Trump hit out at the U.S. court system on social meda.

“A Judge ruled against us on 530,000 Illegal Migrants … saying that they can’t be looked at as a group, but that each case has to be tried individually. Based on the Court System, that would take approximately 100 years,” he wrote.

“What is going on with our Courts? They are totally OUT OF CONTROL. They seem to hate “TRUMP” so much, that anything goes!”

Officials in Donald Trump’s administration have claimed a wrongfully deported Maryland man is “involved in human trafficking”.

The allegations appear to have been firse introduced publicly during a White House press conference two weeks ago.

On Tuesday, press secretary Karoline Leavitt repeated the claims, labelling Abrego Garcia “a foreign terrorist” and an “MS-13 gang member” who “engaged in human trafficking.”

Homeland Security assistant secretary Tricia McLaughlin told ABC News the same day it “would be insane” to share any reports detailing intelligence linking Garcia to trafficking – an allegation his lawyers and family flatly deny.

“We’re not going to give out our national security documents every time a terrorist denies they are a terrorist,” McLaughlin said.

El Salvador President Nayib Bukele said earlier this week in a visit to the White House that he would not return wrongly-deported man Abrego Garcia to the U.S.

Kilmar Abrego Garcia should never have been deported to El Salvador.

In 2019, a judge granted a withholding order that prevents his removal from the country for humanitarian reasons.

Since his extradition to a notorious jail ini El Salvador in March, the Trump administration has repeatedly admitted he was sent there due to an “administrative error.”

But the White House has said it cannot force El Salvador to return him, and the Trump administration has refused to ask El Salvador’s president Nayib Bukele to return Garcia.

Garcia’s wife, Jennifer Vasquez Sura, told a crowd of protesters in Maryland that she “will not stop fighting” until she sees her husband alive.

He traveled there to meet with the country’s deputy president but was later denied a meeting with wrongly-deported man Kilmar Abrego Garcia, and was not allowed a phone call either. He was also not permitted to meet with Garcia’s family.

Garcia was deported to El Salvador in March despite a court order preventing his deportation. The White House has since said that the Slavadoran citizen has ties to the MS-13 gang, but his lawyers say the government has not provided evidence to prove it.

Van Hollen said it was an “unjust situation”.

“The Trump administration is lying about Abrego Garcia. The American courts have looked at the facts,” he said.

Abrego Garcia grew up in El Salvador’s capital, San Salvador. He moved with his family to Guatemala after a long campaign of extortion from local gang, Barrio 18, against himself and other members of his family.

Garcia later fled to the U.S. illegally when he was 16 to join his older brother Cesar who had also moved to escape gang threats in El Salvador.

Garcia later met Jennifer Vasquez Sura, a U.S. citizen, and after she learnt she was pregnant he moved in with her and her two children.

In 2019 he ended up being detained by Immigration and Customs Enforcement. Abrego Garcia later told an immigration judge that he would seek asylum and asked to be released. Vasquez Sura was five months into a high-risk pregnancy.

ICE argued Garcia was a certified gang member, alleging he belonged to a New York chapter of the MS-13 gang. Garcia has never lived in New York.

Garcia checked in with ICE yearly, and was issued a work permit, and had been raising three children with Vasquez Sura including their 5-year-old son.