Economy
May 22, 2020
Currency Update for Steel Trading Nations
Written by Peter Wright
The U.S. dollar weakened against 11 of the 16 steel trading nation currencies in the last 30 days, through May 18. The biggest change was that the Brazilian real headed in the other direction and declined by 9.2 percent. The effect of the coronavirus pandemic was not evident at the three-month level when the dollar strengthened against 12 of the 16. In the last three months, the currencies of Brazil, Mexico, Russia, South Africa and Turkey were down by double digits.
In this report, we examine the change in currency values of the 16 pre-eminent global steel and iron ore trading nations. The currencies of these 16 don’t necessarily follow the Broad Index value of the U.S. dollar, and that was the case in the last month. The latest value of the Broad Index as published by the Federal Reserve was May 15 on which date the dollar was up by 1.1 percent in 30 days. Our country data from Oanda was current as of May 18.
