If China’s demand slows, gold’s price will decline. Much is riding on U.S.-China politics.
If gold imports via Hong Kong or Switzerland decline over a few months, that’s a sign China is easing up on buying.
If someone told you in January to put $10,000 into gold (GC00) instead of the Nasdaq Composite COMP or a bitcoin (BTCUSD) exchange-traded fund and that you’d thank them by October, you might not have believed it.
But gold has outshone them all; it is outperforming every major stock index from Shanghai to New York. The precious metal currently is at an all-time high and approaching $4,400 an ounce – yet there’s no global recession that typically would cause a flight to the safety of gold. On Oct. 15, JP Morgan Chase (JPM) Chief Executive Jamie Dimon said during a Fortune magazine event that “gold could easily to go $5,000 or $10,000 in environments like this.”
Vladimir Signorelli, head of Bretton Woods Research, ties gold’s surge to geopolitics – namely, a “low-grade civil conflict in the West and a great-power realignment reshaping the post-World War II economic order.” This includes China to a large extent, but also the risk of a never-ending Ukraine war.
Signorelli is a protege of economist Jude Wanniski, who pioneered the political model of market analysis. Gold buyers, Signorelli says, are demanding “proof the dollar still has a center of gravity.”
This is one narrative – the “end of the U.S. dollar” story – popular on political podcasts like “War Room” and “The Megyn Kelly Show,” and often flanked by gold-investment ads.
The other narrative in the gold story is China. Both China’s central bank and Chinese investors have been buying gold all year – roughly 39 tons so far. Their motive looks defensive.
The 90-day U.S.-China tariff truce expires on Nov. 10. Trade talks have stalled, with Trump threatening (and then retracting) 100% tariffs on Chinese goods. Beijing’s gold accumulation has less to do with emerging-market central banks diversifying holdings away from the dollar, and more about preparing for a worsening trade war.
Read: A new front opens in the Sino-American trade war – this time at sea.
Gold above $4,000 reflects extraordinary demand, much of it central-bank driven. It has less to do with the U.S. dollar DXY and more to do with central banks worried about their own currencies. If China does not get some sort of deal by Nov. 10, it’s expecting a weakening renminbi (USDCNY). China is fortifying itself before the potential currency stress to come.
The “Cloak and Dagger” blog, a geopolitical and geo-economic analysis forum, predicted recently that when China stops buying gold, gold prices will fall. That means erosion of both China’s gold position and the renminbi once devaluation begins.
The clues will come through in the trade data. If gold imports via Hong Kong or Switzerland decline over a few months, that’s a sign China is easing up on buying. A steadier renminbi versus the dollar might also be a clue that the central bank feels less need to hedge with gold. They’ll become sellers of gold if the Chinese currency devalues due to the trade war and needs support. China sometimes likes a weaker currency because it makes its exports more attractive – but its exports are a leading cause of the trade war, so good luck with that, Beijing.
“When you see an accumulation of gold from central banks, I think it has more to do with a fear of their own devaluation than it has to do with dollar devaluation,” says Tony Nash, one half of the “Cloak and Dagger” duo and CEO of Complete Intelligence, an AI-based market-forecasting firm.
Poland offers a parallel: The country’s central bank said it would increase gold as a percentage of its reserves to 30%, from 20%. The zloty (USDPLN) has gained more than 12% against the dollar this year, prompting the Polish central bank to warn that currency strength could generate billions in losses.
How much of the gold surge is China, and how much is an antidollar bet regardless of China, evidently does not concern the Federal Reserve.
Meanwhile, the “dollar is dying” story persists – fed by America’s debt burden, political paralysis in Washington and what some describe as a “cold civil war” within the West itself.
How much of the gold surge is China, and how much is an antidollar bet regardless of China, evidently does not concern the U.S. Federal Reserve. But if gold starts to approach $5,000 an ounce, it will cause problems.
“My thesis is they begin [gold-price] suppression via the futures market soon,” says Albert Marko, co-founder of “Cloak and Dagger” and a political and economic consultant to investment firms. “Many think it’s all China and their dedollarization, but it’s mostly U.S. investors piling into a false narrative of dollar reserve status in question.”
Suppression, in this case, would largely come from the big money-center banks and hedge-fund giants who all agree in unison to take some of the shine off of gold, especially if it nears Dimon’s $5,000 mark. He might have given us a clue as to where big money managers see this going. Everyone believes in gold’s upside because of China, wars, and rumors of wars from the U.S. to Europe. Those big picture themes add to the “end of the dollar empire” narrative.
When gold pierces through supply growth by 50%-plus – compared with gold-mining output up around 1% – something is being questioned. Whether real or imagined, one question is currency stability. The other is trade policy toward China and its impact on that economy.
The U.S. lives inside what can only be called a slow-burn political conflict that has many investors believing the dollar is in trouble. They are buying gold. An escalating trade war with China and geopolitical uncertainty across the West has gold reaching new heights. Markets move more on political signals than on economic data. As long as that keeps up, politics will decide gold’s fate.
Kenneth Rapoza is an analyst for the Coalition for a Prosperous America, which represents U.S. producers and workers. He is a former journalist who has reported from Brazil and covered the BRIC economies.
Read: Gold prices are so high, even central banks are feeling FOMO
More: Gold is smashing records as the dollar wavers – prompting precious-metal miners to come off the sidelines
-Kenneth Rapoza
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