President Trump offered a new cold shower to the markets announcing (via twitter) that tariffs on Argentinian and Brazilian steel will be re-imposed. The reasoning behind his decision is that they two countries are unfairly devaluing their currencies. A risk off mode followed his tweet. Equities fell significantly, the JPY and the CHF strengthened. The USD did not behave like a safe haven, possibly because the initial tweet on Argentina and Brazil was followed by another tweet that was favoring rate cuts and USD weakening.
Today, the annual NATO summit begins in London. Trump is phrasing himself for the increased military spending of NATO members (+$130bn since he took office). Nevertheless, this year’ s most significant issue is not expected to be the member’s military budget, but rather the USA and Turkey’s failure to consult the NATO alliance before taking military action in Syria. Relations between President Macron and President Erdogan are tense. Worth noting that the USA is considering imposing heavy tariffs on French products in response to France imposing digital service taxes on the US tech giants.
The RBA (Australia) kept its monetary policy unchanged at the today’s monetary meeting.
Macro releases: No significant macro release is expected today, other than the US total vehicles sales. Full economic calendar can be found here.
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