The US dollar emerged as the strongest currency on the Forex market today after trade war tensions continued to escalate as US President Donald Trump chose the European Union as the new target for his criticism of unfair trade deals.
While previously Trump was chastising mostly China, he said in an interview yesterday:
The European Union is possibly as bad as China, just smaller. It’s terrible what they do to us.
But the mean comments were not the only problem as previously the President said that he may target cars imported from the EU with new tariffs. Obviously, Europeans were not pleased with that, threatening to respond with the equivalent of $300 billion in duties on US cars.
Today’s macroeconomic data in the United States was confusing as the report from Markit showed that growth of the manufacturing sector was slowing, while the report from the Institute for Supply Management showed that it was actually accelerating. Later this week, employment data will be released, firstly from Automatic Data Processing, then nonfarm payrolls from the Bureau of Labor Statistics. It is important to remember that many US economic releases will be moved closer to the end of the week due to the July 4 holiday in the United States.
EUR/USD dropped from 1.1683 to 1.1597 as of 15:25 GMT today. GBP/USD declined from 1.3204 to 1.3118. USD/JPY rose from 110.60 to 110.79, though retreated from the daily high of 111.06.
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