Investing.com - The U.S. dollar was flat, while the British pound edges down on Thursday in Asia after U.K. Prime Minister Theresa May won a vote of confidence in her leadership of the Conservative Party.
May won the leadership challenge by 200 votes to 117 votes against her in the ballot of Conservative members of parliament (MPs).
The British pound jumped about 1% on Wednesday following the news but gave back some of its gains today. The GBP/USD pair last traded at 1.2618 by 11:40 PM ET (04:40 GMT), down 0.1%.
May now faces an uphill battle to convince her own party MPs and those among the opposition to back the Brexit deal she struck with Europe.
"Just after the actual result was announced, profit-taking dominated, (but) sterling stopped appreciating," said Masafumi Yamamoto, chief currency strategist at Mizuho Securities.
"That shows it's not bad news, but it doesn't fix the Brexit issue. In that sense, uncertainty continues."
The EUR/USD pair was unchanged at 1.1368 as traders awaited a policy meeting by the European Central Bank later in the day.
The U.S. dollar index that tracks the greenback against a basket of other currencies inched up 0.1% to 97.078.
Meanwhile, the USD/CNY pair slipped 0.1% as the Chinese yuan received support from reports that suggested growing signs of easing in tensions with the U.S.
China appeared to be taking more steps to tone down its high-tech industrial development push. Citing two people familiar with the matter, Bloomberg reported that Beijing may delay the “Made in China 2025” plan by a decade to 2035. China will also seek to be more open to participation by foreign companies, the report said.
The “Made in China 2025” is a strategic plan announced in May 2015. The plan aims to lessen China’s dependency on imported technology and has been a main target in Trump’s trade war.
The People's Bank of China (PBOC) set the yuan reference rate at 6.8769 vs the previous day's close of 6.8793.
Elsewhere, the USD/JPY pair rose 0.2% to 113.48, while the AUD/USD pair gained 0.1% to 0.7228.