The peso weakened slightly against the dollar, although it breached the P51 level intraday, as concerns on a possible trade war between the US and China escalated.
The local currency ended Tuesday’s session at P52.08 versus the greenback, shedding 4.5 centavos from the P52.035-per-dollar finish on Monday.
The local currency opened weaker at P52.08 against the dollar, which was also its worst showing. Its intraday high, meanwhile, stood at P51.94 versus the US currency.
Dollars traded slipped to $657.5 million from the $507 million that switched hands in the previous session.
“The peso moved sideways on bargain hunting from yesterday’s close while fears increased on a possible trade war following China’s plans to impose tariffs on US,” a trader told BusinessWorld in an e-mail.
On late Sunday, China slapped new tariffs on 128 American goods including frozen pork, wine and apples.
This is Beijing’s retaliatory response to the duties imposed by President Donald J. Trump on Chinese steel and aluminum as well as the $50-billion tariffs following a seven-month investigation into alleged intellectual property theft.
Meanwhile, another trader said that the local currency tracked the dollar-yen trading.
“The dollar’s movement was quite unusual because we saw the dollar slightly weaker across currencies. But for us, we were tracking the dollar-yen which was opposite. We saw stronger dollar against the yen,” the trader said in a phone interview. — Karl Angelo N. Vidal

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