By Chibuike Oguh and Alun John<\/p>\n
NEW YORK\/LONDON (Reuters) -The dollar lost ground against major peers including the Swiss franc and Japanese yen on Tuesday as U.S.-China trade tensions resurged, while the euro firmed after the French government proposed suspending a landmark pension reform.<\/p>\n
The dollar weakened 0.37% to 0.801 Swiss franc and eased 0.37% to 151.71 yen , a day after rising against both currencies.<\/p>\n
“The market got caught a little bit yesterday,” said Marc Chandler, chief market strategist at Bannockburn Capital Markets. “People wanted to believe that the U.S.-China trade tensions had de-escalated. But it’s clear that they have not.”<\/p>\n
The U.S. and China on Tuesday began charging additional port fees on ocean shipping firms that move everything from holiday toys to crude oil.<\/p>\n
In addition, Beijing announced countermeasures against five U.S.-linked subsidiaries of South Korean shipbuilding firm Hanwha Ocean. China also said it was investigating how its domestic shipping industry might be affected by a U.S. Section 301 probe into allegedly unfair trade practices by foreign countries.<\/p>\n
The tit-for-tat measures undermined what appeared to be a conciliatory tone from U.S. President Donald Trump at the weekend that had helped fuel some optimism at the start of this week.<\/p>\n
U.S. equities were mixed in choppy trading. The Dow Jones Industrial Average rose 203.54 points, or 0.44%, to 46,271.12. The S&P 500 fell 10.34 points, or 0.16%, to 6,644.39 and the Nasdaq Composite dropped 172.91 points, or 0.76%, to 22,521.70.<\/p>\n
“I think what’s going on is that markets don’t believe that this will be a long-term problem especially with the history of the past year starting in April,” said Joseph Trevisani, senior analyst at FX Street.<\/p>\n
“China started this particular round of this … but it’s not either in the long-term interest of the U.S. or China for this to continue.”<\/p>\n
The U.S. labor market remained mired in its low-hiring, low-firing doldrums through September, though the economy “may be on a somewhat firmer trajectory than expected,” Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell said on Tuesday.<\/p>\n
French Prime Minister Sebastien Lecornu suspended a landmark 2023 pension reform until after the 2027 presidential election, bowing to pressure from leftist lawmakers who had demanded such a move to ensure his political survival.<\/p>\n
The euro extended gains against the dollar following the announcement. It was up 0.33% at $1.1606.<\/p>\n
“It looks like there’s going to be less fiscal austerity than the previous government. French bonds are having a good day – they are the best performing in the euro zone,” Chandler added.<\/p>\n
Britain’s pound was off 0.05% on the dollar at $1.3326 after data showed British pay growth slowing and jobless claims ticking higher.<\/p>\n
The pound was also softer against the euro, with the common currency up 0.37% at 87.08 pence.<\/p>\n
The Australian dollar, often used as a liquid proxy for Chinese assets and broader risk sentiment given the two countries’ close economic links, shed 0.32% to 0.6491. The New Zealand dollar fell 0.16% to $0.5716.<\/p>\n
Elsewhere, cryptocurrencies were lower, with bitcoin dropping 2.02% to $113,460.16. Ethereum declined 3.59% to $4,135.78.<\/p>\n
(Reporting by Chibuike Oguh in New York; Additional reporting by Rae Wee; Editing by Chizu Nomiyama, Alison Williams and Richard Chang)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"By Chibuike Oguh and Alun John NEW YORK\/LONDON (Reuters) -The dollar lost ground against major peers including the…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":213173,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[12],"tags":[45,49,48,103478,100,64473,17784],"class_list":{"0":"post-213172","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-markets","8":"tag-business","9":"tag-ca","10":"tag-canada","11":"tag-french-government","12":"tag-markets","13":"tag-swiss-franc","14":"tag-trade-tensions"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/213172","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=213172"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/213172\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/213173"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=213172"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=213172"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=213172"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}