A central bank official has today proposed that China should let the yuan appreciate to offset the rising costs of commodity imports. Does that herald a shift in policy from the People’s Bank of China? If so, economists at ING read that as broadly bearish for the dollar.
How will the FX market react?
“Regarding the PBoC comment to let the yuan rise to offset higher commodity import prices, my opinion is that it is possible for the PBoC to let the yuan move by itself in reaction to those PBoC comments. The market could push the yuan higher against the dollar, in effect, the market will be fulfilling the PBoC’s desire for a stronger yuan.”
“My view is that it will be very hard for USD/CNY to reach 6.10. Our existing forecast is 6.30 by year-end. The main risk of such a strong yuan is that it hurts exports, and as such, it hurts exporters and therefore producers in the same way as high commodity prices. Exports are still very important to China as the western world recovers from covid.”
“Let’s see whether USD/CNY can break under the 6.40/41 area over coming weeks (we do in general like a soft dollar environment this summer) and in general, broad trends in USD/Asia – particularly in USD/CNY – do tend to support the overall USD trend.”
“But if we do see an independent move lower in USD/CNH as the market does the PBoC’s bidding of delivering a stronger currency to fight import prices – stable correlations suggest EUR/USD would be rallying at the same time. Such a move would support our end year EUR/USD forecast of 1.28.”
Share
