By Kevin Buckland
TOKYO (Reuters) – Asian stocks followed Wall Street higher on Wednesday and the U.S. dollar meandered as markets awaited clarity on President Donald Trump’s trade policy ahead of a new round of tariffs next week.
Traders received some hope on flexibility from the White House after Trump said on Monday that not all levies would come on the April 2 deadline, and some countries would get breaks, without providing further details.
At the same time, Trump opened a new front in his trade war with a directive for 25% secondary tariffs on any country that buys oil or gas from Venezuela. That initially sent oil prices higher, but the impact was offset somewhat by relief from Black Sea maritime security deals struck by the U.S. in the war in Ukraine.
Japan’s Nikkei advanced 0.35%, and South Korea’s KOSPI rose 0.37%.
Australian stocks gained 0.76%, with softer-than-forecast consumer price data providing a bit of additional support. The Australian dollar eased 0.1% to $0.6298.
Hong Kong’s Hang Seng climbed 0.8%. Chinese blue chips were flat.
U.S. S&P 500 futures pointed 0.08% higher after the cash index eked out a 0.16% gain overnight.
“There’s an elevated baseline anxiety in the markets still ahead of next week’s trade policy announcement from the Trump administration,” said Kyle Rodda, senior financial markets analyst at Capital.com.
“However, that’s eased somewhat courtesy of comments from the U.S. President about narrower and more targeted trade restrictions.”
The U.S. dollar index, which measures the currency against a basket of six major peers, inched 0.07% higher. That was after slipping 0.12% on Tuesday, its first losing session in about a week.
It was plumbing a five-month low of 103.19 last week, weighed down by worries that Trump’s trade war could trigger a U.S. recession.
Data overnight showed consumer confidence plunged to the lowest level in more than four years this month.
The dollar added 0.16% to 150.16 yen. Bank of Japan Governor Kazuo Ueda said on Wednesday that the central bank had yet to sufficiently achieve its inflation target, signalling a potentially slower pace of interest rate hikes.
At the same time, the yield on 10-year Japanese government bonds rose to the highest since 2008.
The euro slipped 0.09% to $1.0782, and sterling drooped 0.1% to $1.2931.
Gold edged slightly lower to around $3,019. It has been meandering this week just below the all-time high of 3,057.21 reached on Thursday.
Oil prices rose, with Brent crude futures gaining 0.3% to $73.27 a barrel, while U.S. West Texas Intermediate crude futures added 0.4% to $69.28 a barrel.
(Reporting by Kevin Buckland; Editing by Muralikumar Anantharaman)
