Investing.com - Gold prices turned around from early morning losses on Friday as a disappointing jobs report and escalating trade tensions between the U.S. and China spurred demand for the precious metal.
Gold futures for June delivery on the Comex division of the New York Mercantile Exchange slipped $8.90, or around 0.7%, to $1,337.40 a troy ounce at 10:51AM ET (14:51GMT).
Gold has been on a whirlwind ride since late Thursday when Trump ordered trade representative Robert Lighthizer to consider additional tariffs on $100 billion of Chinese imports, escalating the trade conflicts between the world’s two largest economies.
In response, China’s state media said Friday that Beijing will defend its interests "against new U.S. actions." On Wednesday, the country also said it would levy a 25% tariff on about $50 billion of U.S. imports including soybeans, automobiles chemicals and aircraft.
Gold is generally sought out as a safe haven store of value in times of political and economic uncertainty, markets have been jittery all week as the U.S. and China play tit-for-tat on tariff threats.
Though Trump’s announcement initially spurred buying, the precious metal was unable to hold those gains in overnight trading.
However, the arrival of the monthly jobs report data managed to push gold back into the black.
According to the government report, the American economy created only 103,000 jobs in March, its lowest level in six months and well below the forecast for the creation of 193,000 posts.
Furthermore, the jobless rate held steady at 4.1%, once again disappointing expectations for a drop to 4.0%.
March’s jobs report did confirm a slight uptick in wage growth a 0.3% rise from the previous month and a higher 2.7% advance year-on-year.
However, the overall reading, along with current certainty over trade conditions between the U.S. and China, pushed bets for rate hikes lower when compared to a week ago.
Expectations of rising rates tend to be hurtful for the non-yielding precious metal.
Traders will now turn their attention to pay close attention to current Fed chairman Jerome Powell who is scheduled to speak about the economic outlook at the Economic Club of Chicago on Friday at 1:30PM ET (17:30GMT) for any clues on the path for monetary policy.
Powell is widely expected to repeat his call that there are no signs of runaway inflation and that a gradual pace of rate increases is appropriate.
Elsewhere in metals trading, silver gained 0.28% to $16.400 a troy ounce by 10:52AM ET (14:52GMT), platinum slipped 0.01% at $915.20 a troy ounce, palladium traded down 0.37% at $896.75 a troy ounce, while copper lost 0.83% to $3.049 a pound.