Hawkish Powell trumped by payrolls & China optimism

After another turbulent week in currency markets, the US dollar looks set to end the week a touch lower against most major currencies after a mixed US payrolls report and hopes that China is about to relax its “zero-COVID” policy offset the ultra-hawkish message from Chair Powell after the FOMC meeting earlier in the week. Our sense remains that the Chinese authorities are unlikely to remove controls even if some recalibration may take place. In other words, today’s relief rally in the renminbi and other currencies sensitive the outlook in China looks overly optimistic, in our view. With respect to the Fed, Chair Powell’s comments left little doubt that policymakers will maintain their aggressive tightening approach in the near term and, on balance, we think today’s payrolls report strengthened the case for more tightening. Next week’s pivotal (pun intended) data point will be the US CPI data, which our US economics team forecasts to come in softer than consensus, although still indicating a pace of price increases well above the FOMC’s target.