2026-01-30T08:39:33+00:00
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Shafaq News
The dollar rose on Friday, clawing back some of its
slide on the week, after U.S. President Donald Trump said he would soon
announce his nominee to head the Federal Reserve while optimism grew for
Washington to avert a government shutdown.
Trump said he intends to name his pick to replace Fed
Chair Jerome Powell on Friday, following news that former Fed Governor Kevin
Warsh visited the White House. The Japanese yen fell, and cryptocurrencies
tumbled.
The greenback recovered some of this week’s losses
after tension between Trump and Cuba, Iran, Venezuela, Greenland and Europe hit
some investors’ confidence in U.S. assets.
“The appointment of Warsh, if it’s true, will be
seen as someone who can, in a way, remain independent, and not someone seen as
likely to be subservient to Trump’s wishes,” said Khoon Goh, head of Asia
research for ANZ in Singapore.
“Any sensible market participant would not want
to carry a big position into the weekend,” he added. “So some of this
could just be positioning lightening up. If you’re short dollars, you’ve done
well, take your chips off the table.”
The dollar index, which measures the greenback
against a basket of currencies, rose 0.4% to 96.55, trimming its weekly slide
to 0.9%.
The euro dipped 0.4% to $1.1922, while the yen
weakened 0.5% to 153.85 a dollar. Sterling slid 0.4% to $1.3751.
Bloomberg News said Warsh would get the nod to replace
Powell at the Fed, while a person familiar with the matter told Reuters he met
Trump at the White House on Thursday.
The dollar also received a lift after Republican and
Democratic lawmakers hammered out a deal to stave off a looming government
shutdown.
Escalating conflict abroad and unease over domestic
immigration crackdowns have hammered the U.S. currency, driving the dollar
index to a four-year low earlier this week.
Overnight, the White House said Trump signed an
executive order for tariffs on countries that provide oil to Cuba, while he
threatened new tariffs on Canada and said the United States was decertifying
business jets made there.
With tension simmering in Iran, Trump said on Thursday
he planned to speak with leaders in Tehran, even as the U.S. dispatched another
warship to the Middle East and Pentagon chief Pete Hegseth said the military
would be ready to carry out whatever the president decided.
The dollar closed last week with its biggest fall
since last April, driven in part by the Trump administration’s tariff threats
against European countries if they stood in the way of his ambition of buying
Greenland.
The spat over Greenland was the start of wider
geopolitical concerns that have dragged the currency broadly lower, said
Westpac Group senior economist Mantas Vanagas.
“It’s the fact that the ‘Sell America” trade
has resurfaced, and investors are questioning to what extent the United States
is still a trustworthy partner for other economies,” he added.
The dollar found some support after the Fed held
interest rates steady on Wednesday against the backdrop of what Fed Chair
Powell described as a solid economy and diminished risks to both inflation and
employment.
The yen broke back above 154 to the dollar, but is
still poised for its second straight weekly gain, as Japanese policymakers
hinted at possible coordinated currency market intervention with the United
States to defend the currency.
The yen fell to a near 18-month low last week as
concerns about Japan’s finances mounted before a snap election in which Prime
Minister Sanae Takaichi and her opponents are campaigning on a plank of tax
cuts.
The Australian dollar weakened 0.7% versus the
greenback to $0.6997, and the kiwi lost 0.5% to $0.6046.
In cryptocurrencies, bitcoin tumbled 2.2% to
$82,519.22, touching the weakest since November 21, while ether sank declined
3% to $2,732.04.
(Reuters)
Only the headline is edited by Shafaq News Agency.
