Investing.com - Gold prices edged up on Thursday in Asia as traders nervously await the start of two-day trade talks in Washington later in the day to see if Chinese negotiators could convince the White House to back down on a possible tariff hike on Chinese imports.
Gold futures for June delivery, traded on the Comex division of the New York Mercantile Exchange, were up 0.1% at $1,282.65.
Gold's rival, the dollar, was little changed. The U.S. Dollar Index Futures, which measure the greenback against a basket of six currencies, traded at 97.373, down 0.01%.
Overnight, Trump said China "broke the deal" in the ongoing U.S.-China trade talks, blaming Beijing for trying to re-negotiate and slowing down the progress of the discussions. That came as a shock as multiple major newswires that cited insider sources reported as recent as last week that the two sides were moving closer to a trade agreement and that a deal could be signed this Friday.
Trump added that the U.S. "won't back down until China stops cheating our workers and stealing our jobs."
"That's what's going to happen. Otherwise, we don't have to do business with them," he said. "We can make the product right here if we have to — like we used to."
"If we don't make the deal, nothing wrong with taking in over $100 billion a year, $100 billion, we never did that before," he said.
David Song, an analyst at DailyFX, said in a Reuters report that “we are not in the flight to safety or panic mode despite the risk averse market we are seeing right now and that’s why we are not seeing gold prices rally.”
“There is still some hope that there could be a deal between U.S. and China. We are watching $1,250-$1,260 levels with 200-day moving average a key factor for gold,” Song said, adding that the Japanese yen’s uptick has benefited from the risk-off sentiment in global markets.