Financial markets in the US were rather quiet yesterday as traders celebrated Labor Day. However, this didn’t stop anxiety over the US-China trade war growing once more. Chinese factories posted their weakest expansion in 14 months in August, as exports dropped for the fifth consecutive month. There is a very real worry that Trump’s tariffs are affecting China’s economy and forcing job cuts.
The dollar strengthened once more against sterling as UK manufacturing growth hit a two-year low, but it did lose some ground against the euro. This was likely down to there being no economic data releases from the US, so this could all change today when the schedule is much busier.
We will see how America’s manufacturing sector performed in August with the Markit manufacturing PMI and we will also see new orders, prices and employment figures from the sector. Tomorrow we have a key piece of data in the form of July’s balance of trade figures. The deficit is expected to have widened from $46.3 billion to $50 billion.
