Gold rose more than 1% on Thursday as investors flocked to safe-haven bullion after the U.S. hiked tariffs on China, the top metals consumer, escalating the already heated trade war, despite a 90-day pause on tariffs for other countries.

President Donald Trump’s rapid-fire trade war has set in motion a commercial rupture without precedent, which is rippling through the global economy in unpredictable and costly ways. The triple-digit taxes that the president has imposed on Chinese products — and China’s retaliatory measures — are expected to shrink trade between the world’s two largest economies from a recent annual peak of nearly $700 billion to almost nothing.

Ahead of the dramatic market movements that accompanied those levies, the consumer price index (CPI) cooled to 2.4 percent in March from a year ago, the Labor Department said in a statement -- lower than economists' estimates.

US consumer inflation cooled last month on plunging gas prices, according to government data published Thursday, as consumers and businesses waited nervously for President Donald Trump's sweeping tariffs to come into effect.

U.S. consumer prices unexpectedly fell in March, but inflation risks are tilted to the upside after President Donald Trump doubled down on tariffs on imported Chinese goods even as he lowered duties on other nations.