Investing.com - The Australian and New Zealand dollars moved lower against their U.S. counterpart on Thursday, after the release of downbeat Australian trade balance data and as the greenback mildly recovered from recent losses.
AUD/USD dropped 0.55% to 0.7924, the lowest since July 26.
Earlier Thursday, the Australian Bureau of Statistics said the trade surplus narrowed to A$0.856 billion in June from A$2.024 billion in May, whose figure was revised from a previously estimated surplus of A$2.471 billion.
Analysts had expected the trade surplus to narrow to only A$1.800 billion.
NZD/USD declined 0.47% to trade at 0.7394, the lowest since July 21.
Meanwhile, the U.S. dollar regained some ground on Thursday, but gains were expected to remain limited amid ongoing U.S. political risks.
The White House on Tuesday confirmed that U.S. President Donald Trump played a role in drafting a statement about his son’s meeting with a Russian lawyer during last year’s election campaign, which was later shown to be misleading.
The fresh revelations added to investors’ fears that the ongoing controversies embroiling the Trump administration will make it more difficult to make progress on the president’s economic agenda.
Recent lackluster U.S. economic reports, raising doubts over the future pace of policy tightening by the Federal Reserve, have also weighed on the greenback.
Investors were looking ahead to Friday’s nonfarm payrolls report for July for fresh indications on the possible direction of Fed policy.
The U.S. dollar index, which measures the greenback’s strength against a trade-weighted basket of six major currencies, was up 0.11% at 92.85, pulling away from the previous session’s fresh 15-month low of 92.41.