VANCOUVER (miningweekly.com) – Market volatility continues to rattle the stock markets and metals commodities are alternately coming under pressure and recovering as US President Donald Trump and China stand-off over trade, or more specifically, their bilateral trade balance.
It was against this backdrop that data company Oreninc’s index of mergers and acquisitions activity in Canada fell in the week ending April 6, to 33.86 from an updated 45.10 a week earlier, as the lack of brokered action outweighed the increase in dollars announced, the company said in a statement.
China responded to Trump’s previous discourse about implementing tariffs on some $50-billion of trade on the grounds that China steals US intellectual property with its own tariffs of $50-billion worth of US goods, in a move that sees it ready to wage a trade war "to the end”.
Not to be outdone, Trump responded at the end of the week with the threat of another $100-billion of tariffs against Chinese products.
“Given the trade imbalance between the two nations – China exported $505-billion to the US in 2017 and imported just $130-billion – it has fewer exports with tariffs than Trump. However, beyond physical products China could look at trade in services such as tourism and education or make life difficult for US companies operating in its territory such as Apple and Starbucks. Then again, China is the biggest foreign holder of US Treasury debt, owning about $1.17-trillion and it could cut the amount of US debt it buys,” Oreninc said in its latest index update.
Analysts noted that despite another choppy week for gold, the yellow metal in fact ended on a positive note at $1 333/oz from $1 325/oz a week earlier, despite hitting a mid-week high of $1 341/oz. This was on the back of a weaker-than-expected US employment report for March from the Labour Department that showed the key non-farm payrolls number up 103 000, which was a big miss to the downside.
Oreninc saw total fund raises announced increasing to C$120.7-million, a five-week high, but which included no brokered financings and no bought-deal financings. The average offer size nearly doubled to C$7.1-million, a 64-week high, according to company data.