AUDUSD continues its positive momentum on Tuesday despite some weak Australian statistics.
The Australian Dollar is looking good against the USD. The current quote for the instrument is 0.6402.
The statistics published in the morning showed that the NAB Business Confidence plummeted down to 66 points in March after being -2 points in the previous month. Well, it’s pretty logical considering that the entire business structure of Australia’s key trade and economic partner, China, is almost paralyzed. Another negative signal is a sharp increase in global uncertainty, which prevents the country’s government and manufacturers from planning out the future.
At the same time, the March statistics from China were quite good. The USD-Denominated Trade Balance turned out to be $19.9B against the expected reading of $18.5B. The Export lost 6.6% y/y and recovered a bit after being -17.2% y/y the month before. The Import showed -0.9% y/y, which is much better than market expectations of -9.5% y/y.
Obviously, the domestic demand in China is slowly reaching stability and that’s confirmed by the Import parameters. It’s a very good signal.
In this light, the World Trade Organisation’s expectations relating to the global trade slump by 32% in 2020 may be looking exaggerated. However, the coronavirus pandemic is far from done and may yet throw some unpleasant curves.