Overview

• Most minerals & energy commodities declined in the wake of the Trump Administration’s Liberation Day tariffs (with gold a notable exception). We expect NAB’s Non-rural Commodity Price Index to fall by 4.9% qoq (in US dollar terms) in Q2, following a 1.5% qoq decline in Q1.
• We made significant downward revisions to our global economic forecasts in April – reflecting the negative impact of tariffs as well as the heightened state of policy uncertainty more generally. We now see a significant slowing in global growth – down to around 2¾% in both 2025 and 2026 (from around 3.3% in 2024). These growth rates would be the lowest experienced – excluding the GFC and COVID shocks – since the early 2000s.
• Following on from a double-digit decline in 2024, our commodity price index is forecast to fall by a further 10.4% in 2025 and 7.3% in 2026 – with metallurgical coal, iron ore and thermal coal the main drivers of this trend, while gold is expected to remain elevated.

Find out more in the Minerals & Energy Outlook (May 2025)