The national currency of Canada lost its strength to an eight-month low against its U.S. rival yesterday, after the proposed tariffs by American President Donald Trump towards steel and aluminum. This serves as a negotiating asset regarding the revision of NAFTA. The completion of tariffs is expected this week and Trump plans to exempt Canada and Mexico from the trade deal. Canada is regarded to be the biggest supplier of aluminum and steel to the US, hence, the commodity-linked country will be mainly affected upon the collapse of NAFTA or in case of the slowdown in global trade led by protectionist trade policies. The Loonie trades lower at 0.8 percent to $1.2988 against the US dollar or equal to 76.99 U.S. cents. The Canadian currency reached its weakest level at $1.3002 since July 5. The losses for the CAD occurred on the back of data released last Friday, which indicate the economic expansion of Canada by 1.7 percent on an annualized basis for the Q4 of 2017. The figures came in lower than the expected 2.5 percent by the Canadian central bank. The Bank of Canada has implemented a three-time interest rate hike since July, however, forecasts show that the bank will keep its benchmark rate at 1.2 percent during the policy announcement tomorrow. Scott Lampard, head of global markets at HSBC Bank Canada, stated that he believes the BoC will wait for the first quarter of 2019 prior to any decision of rate hike again. The January domestic trade data is scheduled to be published on Wednesday and the employment report for February is expected on Friday. One of the major exports of the economy is the oil, its price grew along with the American stock market due to projections about strong oil demand. The crude oil futures from the United States came in higher at 2.2 percent and amounted to US$62.57 a barrel. Moreover, the price of Canadian government bonds rose higher than the yield curve as the two-year bonds increased by 4.5 Canadian cents to yield 1.748 percent. While the 10-year rose to 6 Canadian cents to yield 2.192 percent. On one hand, the 10-year yield obtained its lowest intraday at 2.145 percent from January 11 while the gap against its US counterpart stalled by 3.1 basis points to a spread of –68.9 basis points since June 12.
