In This Article:
* Mexican peso rises as much as 2% against dollar
* China's onshore yuan touches 2019 low after weak import data
* Dollar index up 0.2%, bouncing after having lost 1.2% last week
* Graphic: World FX rates in 2019 http://tmsnrt.rs/2egbfVh
By Daniel Leussink
TOKYO, June 10 (Reuters) - The Mexican peso jumped against the dollar on Monday after the United States and Mexico struck a migration deal late last week to avert a tariff war, providing some much-needed relief to fragile market sentiment.
Over the past year, trade disputes between the United States and its trading partners, including a long-running conflict with China, have slowed global growth and unsettled financial markets.
China's exports unexpectedly returned to growth in May despite higher U.S. tariffs, data showed on Monday, but many suspected the rise was due to firms front-loading shipments to avoid higher U.S. tariffs. Fears of a longer U.S.-China trade war continued to persist.
The figures showed imports in May dropped 8.5% from a year earlier, a much worse than expected outcome that signalled weak domestic consumption and weighed on the yuan.
The Mexican peso rose 2% to 19.2275 pesos per dollar after trading resumed for the first time after Mexico agreed on Friday to expand along the entire border a programme that sends migrants seeking asylum in the United States to Mexico.
U.S. President Donald Trump had threatened to impose 5% import tariffs on all Mexican goods starting on Monday if Mexico did not commit to do more to tighten its borders.
"We all knew that Donald Trump was unpredictable, but this was taking it to a whole new level," said Chris Weston, Melbourne-based head of research at foreign exchange brokerage Pepperstone.
"This was political, it was social. It meant that financial markets had to wear a higher risk premium."
Futures for the S&P 500 were last up 0.2%. Benchmark 10-year Treasury yields jumped back 3 basis points to 2.114% after hitting a 21-month low of 2.053% on Friday after soft U.S. jobs data.
Against the safe-haven yen, the dollar gained 0.25% to 108.475 yen. The yen gained in late May on the deteriorating global trade outlook as the currency tends to benefit during geopolitical or financial stress as Japan is the world's biggest creditor nation.
Bart Wakabayashi, Tokyo branch manager at State Street Bank, said the lift to sentiment from the U.S.-Mexico deal would "probably spill over to optimism with China and hopefully some progress there."
"We've had trade talks with the EU, with Japan. Hopefully these will start to turn to the positive narrative which should see further dollar weakness in the yen," he said.