London (awp/afp) – The Mexican peso, the Canadian dollar and the Chinese yuan fell against the dollar on Tuesday after new threats from Donald Trump to impose heavy customs duties on American imports from these countries.
Around 12:30 p.m., the Mexican currency fell by 1.16% against the greenback, to 20.5440 pesos, and the Canadian currency lost 0.76% to 1.4095 Canadian dollars. The Chinese yuan weakened slightly (-0.07%) against the American currency.
Donald Trump confirmed Monday that his first economic measures after his inauguration in January will be to increase customs duties on products coming from China, Canada and Mexico, decisions he justifies by the crises linked to opiates and ‘immigration.
For Canada and Mexico in particular, he wants to impose 25% customs duties on all products, he wrote in a post on his Truth Social network.
These declarations strengthened the US dollar against the currencies of the countries concerned, and slowed its fall against other major currencies.
“Any target that is under Trump’s gaze is likely to be hammered by the financial markets,” notes Kathleen Brooks of XTB.
“The United States is the economy that dominates the world and there is no real alternative for Chinese, Canadian and Mexican exports,” notes the analyst.
But the greenback still remains behind on Tuesday against the euro or even the pound, since the appointment on Friday of Scott Bessent as Secretary of the American Treasury, a figure perceived as moderate by the markets, and in favor of the reduction of the deficit.
The question remains whether such tax increases will also concern the European Union, and to what extent.
On today’s agenda, an American consumer confidence index is expected in November, as well as new home sales figures in October in the United States, revealing the health of the economy.
On the cryptocurrencies side, bitcoin is now far from the $100,000 threshold touched at the end of last week.
Given that bitcoin’s breakthrough “went very far, very quickly”, notes Naeem Aslam, analyst at Zaye Capital, “it was widely anticipated that the price would fall” temporarily.
On Friday, the most popular digital currency lost 2.27% to $91,587.38.
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