Rates move down, treasury yields fall after tariff press conference

April 4, 2025

Happy Friday from Local Mortgage!

It was a very good week for mortgage markets as rates reached a 5-month low. We moved down about .25% to 6.125% for most 30-year fixed conventional scenarios.

Tariff news was in the spotlight this week, trumping all other economic news. President Trump’s Wednesday afternoon press conference announcing increased tariffs for most countries along with China’s retaliation with reciprocal tariffs pushed treasury yields and mortgage rates lower. After reaching lows Friday morning, mortgage bonds have moved back up late Friday afternoon so we will probably continue to see a level of volatility next week.

In other economic news, we got mixed signals from this week’s main reports. The key Employment report revealed the economy gained 228,000 jobs in March, well above the consensus forecast of 140,000. However, the unemployment rate unexpectedly increased from 4.1 to 4.2%.

The other key reports from this week showed economic weakness with both the ISM services sector index and the national manufacturing index both showing signs of economic contraction.

Next week tariff reactions will more than likely still be the main force in the markets but for economic reports, we will get inflation data with the CPI on Thursday and the PPI on Friday.

Hope everyone has a great weekend, and thank you for reading.