CNY/USD - Live Converters & Chart

Chinese Yuan (CNY) outlook

Increasingly, the yuan is being used as a barometer for progress made on US-China trade talks. For that reason, it fell sharply in the weeks leading up to this report (May-17).

Trade tensions were ramped up in May after President Trump announced higher tariffs on Chinese goods, after China retaliated with tariffs of its own, and then after Trump placed Huawei on the "entity list," thereby making it impossible for the tech giant to do business with US firms.

Between May-6 and May-17, the yuan weakened in the offshore market by 3 percent (a considerable amount for a government-controlled currency) to a 5-month low of 6.95 per USD. Onshore yuan, which is more easily controlled by the PBOC, reached towards 6.92.

All eyes now are on the 7.0 exchange rate. Will the PBOC allow the yuan beyond that? An RBC strategist believes that’s unlikely in the short term because a weaker yuan would create more friction between China and the US. Trump often alleges that China purposefully weakens its currency to gain a trade advantage.

“A rapid conclusion to the US–China trade deal and … complete rollback of tariffs ... would be an effective catalyst to drive RMB higher,” Citibank said.

United States Dollar (USD) outlook

The US dollar has benefitted this year despite some quite serious escalations in US-China trade tensions, mainly because the greenback is still considered a safer currency to own than most others. By mid-May, the Dollar Index was nearly 2 percent higher year-to-date; it was only 0.5 percent away from making a 2-year high.

The greenback’s 2019 strength has come in spite of a dovish turn by the Federal Reserve, which said in March it expects no interest rate increase this year. Fortunately for dollar holders, the rest of the world has problems and many other central banks have also turned dovish, removing some of the policy-based incentives for selling USD.

In May, HSBC warned against thinking that the dollar has got too high. The bank highlighted the “desolation and destruction” (an exaggeration) facing other economies and currencies. “You can never get too high,” the bank’s chief analyst said. “What would you want to buy out there if not dollars?”

Read the full article United States Dollar Forecasts.

The CNY/USD mid-rate is the rate you will see quoted online or the news, nobody except the largest banks and businesses can get exchange rates close to this mid-rate. It is actually just the theoretical half-way point (hence mid-rate) between the last rate at which the CNY / USD was traded (bought or sold) in the international markets.