Over the past several weeks, everyone from large corporations to ordinary players in the foreign exchange market has followed the development of the conflict between the United States and the People's Republic of China.
And if the meeting of the leaders of the two countries during the G20 congress gave hope for the settlement of differences in a diplomatic manner and without the introduction of new mutual sanctions, then the unsuccessful negotiations in Shanghai temporarily dashed these hopes.
Despite the fact that Donald Trump has not yet canceled his meeting with the Chinese delegation, scheduled for September, the economic war of the superpowers has reached a new level with new mutual threats and restrictions.
Last week, the President of the "country of freedom" decided to impose duties on Chinese imports. At first, it was about 10% duties, then, perhaps out of emotion, 25% was announced. And this is not the limit. It is possible that the United States has been preparing for punitive measures against China for a long time. Their demands on the Chinese authorities, among other things, are to increase the level of imports of goods from the United States and allow foreign capital to influence the activities of Chinese corporations.
Nevertheless, Beijing “did not buckle” under the pressure of its Western “colleagues”. First, China imposed restrictions on the purchase of US agricultural commodities, forcing US farmers to ask for subsidies from their government. Secondly, the PRC authorities, apparently, artificially lowered the exchange rate of the national currency, increasing its competitiveness in exports. Despite accusations of "currency manipulation" by the United States, Beijing officially denies such interventions in the yen's exchange rates.
Oil reacted to the escalation of the conflict in a predictable way - prices went down. Even reports on declining US energy inventories could not unfold the bearish price movement, and for the 8th week in a row.
The ruble, like oil, has slightly lost ground, although its current rate of around 65 rubles per dollar seems to be pretty good.
It turned out that the new package of foreign sanctions does not apply to operations with the Russian government debt, which means that investor interest in bonds may be high. Whether it is true or not, it will become known on Wednesday, after an auction for OFZ for a period of 5 years and a volume of 20 billion rubles.
You can monitor how the dollar exchange rate chart behaves under pressure from external factors, including paired with the Russian ruble, on a website with a financial bias.
