· The dollar was little changed on Wednesday, hovering near an 11-month peak against a basket of major currencies as China's signal of a tolerance of a stronger yuan offset anxiety about the global trade conflict.
U.S. Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross said the White House will likely keep up pressure on Beijing in an attempt to reach a deal on greater American access to Chinese markets and narrow its trade surplus with the United States.
In this climate of rising trade tensions, heads of major central banks spoke of this risk in their economic outlook at a conference in Sintra, Portugal.
U.S. Federal Reserve President Jerome Powell said "in principle changes in trade policy could cause us to have to question the outlook."
Still Powell and his peers at the European Central Bank and Bank of Japan,Mario Draghi and Haruhiko Kuroda, offered no fresh views on their policy stance.
At 11:50 a.m. EDT (1550 GMT), an index that tracks the dollar against the euro, yen, sterling and three other currencies was down 0.09 percent at 94.994 after touching an 11-month peak of 95.299 earlier on Wednesday.
The euro was little changed at $1.1584 and 127.56 yen.
The greenback was steady against the Japanese currency at 110.11 yen.
· A developing trade war between the world’s biggest economies is weighing on business confidence and could force central banks to downgrade their outlook, the world’s most powerful policymakers argued on Wednesday.
· The U.S. Commerce Department is investigating recent steel price hikes to determine whether some market participants are “illegitimately profiteering” from new tariffs, Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross said on Wednesday.
Ross told a Senate Finance Committee hearing that the price of steel in the U.S. market has risen far more than justified by the 25 percent tariff imposed by the Trump administration, possibly because of “speculative activity,” with some market intermediaries holding back inventories.
· Chinese acquisitions and investments in the U.S. fell 92 percent to just $1.8 billion in the first five months of this year, consulting and research firm Rhodium Group said Tuesday.
Counting divestitures, net Chinese deal flow to the U.S. during that time was a negative $7.8 billion, the report said.
The decline follows a sharp drop in the second half of last year as pressure from both Beijing and the Trump administration curbed a recent surge in cross-border investment. Completed Chinese deals in the U.S. hit a record $46 billion in 2016, and dropped to $29 billion in 2017, according to Rhodium.
· U.S. President Donald Trump on Wednesday backed down and abandoned his policy of separating immigrant children from their parents on the U.S.-Mexico border, after images of youngsters in cages sparked outrage at home and abroad.
· The Bank of England may lay some groundwork on Thursday for an August interest rate rise, if it judges the economy is now turning a corner after an unusually weak start to the year.
No economists polled by Reuters expect the BoE to raise rates when it announces its June policy decision at 1100 GMT, and markets are split over whether the Bank’s next rate rise - which would be just its second since the financial crisis - will come at its next meeting in August, or only later in 2018
· U.S. crude futures rose nearly 2 percent on Wednesday, supported by a drop in domestic inventories, while Brent edged down ahead of an OPEC meeting later this week that may result in increased global production.
U.S. crude inventories USOILC=ECI fell 5.9 million barrels last week, the largest one-week decline since January, the Energy Information Administration said on Wednesday.
Refinery crude runs rose to 17.7 million barrels per day, the highest on record for this time of year, the EIA data showed.
U.S. West Texas Intermediate (WTI) crude futures for July delivery CLc1, which expires on Wednesday, rose $1.15 to settle at $66.22 a barrel, a 1.8 percent gain. WTI futures for August CLc2 closed 81 cents higher at $65.71.
Brent crude futures for August delivery LCOc1 fell 34 cents, or 0.5 percent, to end at $74.74 a barrel.
· Oil markets are bracing for a reshuffle of global trade flows as China threatens to impose tit-for-tat tariffs on imports of U.S. energy products, including crude.
China, which has bought an average 330,000 barrels per day (bpd) of U.S. crude oil this year, is threatening to place a 25 percent tariff on various U.S. commodity exports, including crude oil, although it is so far unclear when such a measure would come in place.
The tariffs could restrict the flow of U.S. barrels going to China - a business now worth almost $1 billion per month
Reference: Reuters, CNBC
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