NEW YORK: The US dollar firmed across the board on Tuesday, garnering safe-haven bids, after a disappointing set of Chinese trade figures hurt the yuan and the Australian and New Zealand currencies, with European risk-sensitive currencies also sliding on the worsening global outlook.
The dollar index rose 0.6% to 102.69, moving further away from Friday’s one-week low in the wake of a mixed US jobs report, which pointed to a cooling but still resilient labour market. The greenback was on track for its best daily gain in about two weeks.
China’s imports and exports fell much faster than expected in July, data on Tuesday showed, with imports down 12.4% from a year earlier while exports contracted by 14.5%, in another sign of the country’s faltering economic recovery and subdued global demand.
“There’s an element of risk aversion. Pretty clearly, the data overnight was not so good, with very sluggish export data across Asia,” said Brad Bechtel, global head of foreign exchange, at Jefferies in New York.
“We’re definitely at a place in the dollar smile where US fundamentals are outperforming the rest of the world. And generally it’s an environment for the dollar to sustain its rally,” he added.
The offshore yuan fell to a five-week low of 7.2514 per dollar, and was last down 0.6% at 7.246. Its onshore counterpart hit a three-week low of 7.2225 per dollar.
The Aussie, a proxy for risk-sensitive currencies that is directly impacted by the yuan, weakened to US$0.6497 against the US currency, its lowest since June 1. It last traded down 0.9% at US$0.6510. The New Zealand dollar dropped to US$0.6035, its weakest level in two months and was last down 1% at US$0.6041.
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