The Tariff Deadline Is Looming – What’s New?

It’s difficult to believe when looking at the day-to-day price changes or when tracking the intraday moves, but generally… Nothing’s happening. At least nothing out of the ordinary given USD Index’s post-breakout pause.

The USD Index is consolidating, and while it moved very insignificantly below its April low, it remains clearly above its declining support line, which is the clearest indication that the trend has already changed.

As the USD Index remains above its declining support line, the GDXJ remains below its rising resistance line. The bearish implications of GDXJ’s confirmed breakdown remain very much intact.

Besides, it seems that given the looming tariff deadline, it seems that we’ll see a bottom and then strength in the USD Index any day (or hour) now. This is based on what we previously saw during tariff-related deadlines.

Tariff Deadline Extension Analysis

The previous tariff deadline situation centered around June 1st, 2025, when Trump initially threatened to impose 50% tariffs on European Union imports. However, on May 25th, 2025 – just 6 days before the deadline – Trump agreed to postpone this deadline to July 9th following a phone call with EU Commission President Ursula von der Leyen. This represented a clear pattern of last-minute flexibility that markets began to anticipate.

The July deadlines presented a more complex scenario, with July 8th marking the expiration of a 90-day pause on “reciprocal tariffs” and July 9th being the extended EU deadline. Importantly, Trump signaled his flexibility much earlier this time. On June 27th, 2025 – about 11-12 days before the deadlines – he stated “No, we can do whatever we want” when asked if the July deadlines were set in stone, indicating they could be extended or shortened. This earlier communication of flexibility represents a key difference from the June pattern.

What makes this particularly relevant for USD Index analysis is that the dollar bottomed on July 1st, 2025 – precisely 7-8 days before the July deadlines. This timing wasn’t coincidental. The market had learned from the June experience that Trump tends to provide flexibility around tariff deadlines, and the July 1st USD bottom occurred right after his June 27th comments about deadline flexibility. Markets essentially front-ran the expected postponement.

Looking at the current August 1st deadline, we can draw several important lessons. If the historical pattern holds, we might expect some form of communication about deadline flexibility approximately 6-12 days before August 1st – which would place it around July 20th-26th, 2025. Given that it’s July 22nd, we’re likely in the middle of this expected communication window.

However, there’s a crucial difference this time. The USD Index has already demonstrated significant strength since its July 1st bottom, breaking above key resistance levels and showing what appears to be a confirmed uptrend reversal. Unlike the previous situations where tariff uncertainty created dollar weakness, the market now seems to be pricing in that tariffs are fundamentally bullish for the USD. This suggests that even if August deadlines are postponed, the USD Index may not revisit the July 1st lows, as the fundamental narrative has shifted from “tariff chaos equals dollar weakness” to “tariff implementation equals dollar strength.”

The pattern suggests that while we might see some near-term USD volatility around potential August deadline communications, any weakness would likely be limited and short-lived compared to the previous cycles, as markets have now embraced the longer-term bullish implications of the tariff policy for dollar strength. That’s exactly what the confirmed breakout indicates on the technical front.

Another medium-term sign pointing to the same thing comes from the analysis of the mining stocks to gold ratio.

The GDXJ to GLD ratio is in the background of the above chart, and the RSI indicator is based on it.

As you can see, each time when the RSI based on this ratio moved above 70 and then below it, it heralded short- or (more often) medium-term declines in the ratio and in gold itself. The orange line represents gold price, but since both: gold and the ratio declined at the same time, GDXJ declined more during those times.

Interestingly, those signals from RSI were not the final tops – these were the leading signals. This means that after we saw them, there was some short-term strength in 3 out 4 cases and the decline started only after those additional small rallies.

Well, we already saw this additional small rally, and the sizes of all recent declines in gold after similar signals were visibly bigger than what we saw so far in gold.

Translation? Gold hasn’t declined enough.

Combining this with what USD’s situation and the whole tariff-related turmoil, it all paints a picture in which the precious metals move much lower in the following weeks.

Is Stocks’ Short-term Top at Hand?

This wouldn’t surprise me as stocks have myriad reasons to move lower, and rising tariffs are just one of them. The thing that I want to show you is a quote from the recent Seasonal Trading Primer by Ryan Michell (combining Rick Ackerman’s signals with seasonality):

The upside target for this short-term trade is likely about to be reached. So, even from this perspective it seems that some kind of turnaround might be at hand.

A top in stocks here could align with a bottom in the USD Index, which could also take place at the same time when gold, silver, and mining stocks form their tops.

All in all, we have very good reasons to expect the USD Index to move higher – much higher – from here. And we have a very good reason to expect platinum – and other precious metals and mining stocks – to move lower. If you’ve been considering making money on this decline – this might serve as a sign that the time to enter positions is running out.

Thank you for reading my today’s analysis – I appreciate that you took the time to dig deeper and that you read the entire piece. If you’d like to get more (and extra details not available to 99% investors), I invite you to stay updated with our free analyses – sign up for our free gold newsletter now.

Thank you.

Przemyslaw K. Radomski, CFA
Founder, Editor-in-chief