Investing.com - The yuan gained while the U.S. dollar was little changed on Monday in Asia after U.S. President Donald Trump said he would delay an increase in tariffs on Chinese goods.
Trump said in a tweet that progress had been made on areas including intellectual property protection, technology transfers, agriculture, services and currency.
He then added that if more progress is made, he would plan a summit meeting with Chinese President Xi Jinping at his Mar-a-Lago estate in Florida to conclude an agreement.
The USD/CNY pair gained 0.3% to 6.6899 following his comments. China will produce figures on manufacturing and non-manufacturing data on Thursday and the Caixin PMI on Friday.
On the other hand, the U.S. dollar index that tracks the greenback against a basket of other currencies inched down 0.02% to 96.345.
The index ended last week down 0.4% after gaining more than 1% the previous week. It started to dip on Friday after Reuters reported that Washington and Beijing had begun drawing up memorandums of understanding over trade, raising hopes that a trade deal between the two sides is getting closer.
The NZD/USD pair rose 0.3% to 0.6865 on upbeat retail sales data. The Statistics New Zealand reported on Monday that the country’s retail sales grew 1.7% during the final quarter of 2018 compared to the upwardly revised 0.3% growth for the third quarter.
The currency pair gave up some of its early gains after the U.S.-China trade news broke, but then quickly recovered.
New Zealand is set to publish trade figures on Wednesday and data on business confidence on Thursday.
The AUD/USD pair also gained 0.3% to 0.7151.