The American dollar was up on Thursday morning based on global investors returning to the safe-haven asset as America-China tensions strengthened exponentially.
The American Dollar Index that checks the U.S dollar against a basket of other major currencies such as (Japanese yen, Euro, British pounds sterling, Swedish krona, Canadian dollar, Swiss France) was up 0.21% to 99.46 by 5:30 am Nigerian local time.
The U.S dollar index also helps to track the strength of the currency in correlation to the biggest forex trading partners around the world.
What it means: Nigerians hoping to meet foreign exchange debt or payment obligations, transactions via the U.S dollar to countries like France, United Kingdom, Australia, Germany Japan, would have the need to pay fewer dollars to fulfill such transactions.
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The political fundamentals among these major powers turned ugly as the U.S government suspended Chinese airlines’ flight from flying into the U.S coming to effect from June 16 after the Chinese barred U.S carriers from re-entering China.
Relations between the two countries soured after China’s approval of the enactment of national security laws in Hong Kong and Macau last month.
Hong Kong’s Legislative Council passed a national anthem bill, a precursor to the national security laws, earlier in the day.
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According to a recent poll conducted by Reuters, the majority of currency experts believe that there was an elevated risk that the US-China tensions will renew safe-haven bets in the next 6 months, meaning the dollar could resume its bullish momentum in the mid-term.
The report from the poll concluded that:
“More than 70% of 57 currency analysts said the risk was “high” that the U.S.-China standoff would renew bets in favor of safe-haven currencies over the next six months.
“International rates to borrow dollars on cross-currency basis swaps, which were extremely high in mid-March, have hit low levels, with the latest euro-dollar three-month swaps rate suggesting it has become more costly to borrow the euro instead.”
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