TOKYO- Asian stocks followed Wall Street higher on Wednesday and the US dollar meandered as markets awaited clarity on President Donald Trump’s trade policy ahead of a new round of tariffs next week.
Traders received some hope on flexibility from the White House after Trump said on Monday that not all levies would come on the April 2 deadline, and some countries would get breaks, without providing further details.
At the same time, Trump opened a new front in his trade war with a directive for 25 percent secondary tariffs on any country that buys oil or gas from Venezuela. That initially sent oil prices higher, but the impact was offset somewhat by relief from Black Sea maritime security deals struck by the US in the war in Ukraine.
Japan’s Nikkei advanced 0.35 percent, and South Korea’s KOSPI rose 0.37 percent.
Australian stocks gained 0.76 percent, with softer-than-forecast consumer price data providing a bit of additional support. The Australian dollar eased 0.1 percent to $0.6298.
Hong Kong’s Hang Seng climbed 0.8 percent. Chinese blue chips were flat.
US S&P 500 futures pointed 0.08 percent higher after the cash index eked out a 0.16 percent gain overnight.
“There’s an elevated baseline anxiety in the markets still ahead of next week’s trade policy announcement from the Trump administration,” said Kyle Rodda, senior financial markets analyst at Capital.com.
“However, that’s eased somewhat courtesy of comments from the US President about narrower and more targeted trade restrictions.”
The US dollar index which measures the currency against a basket of six major peers, inched 0.07 percent higher. That was after slipping 0.12 percent on Tuesday, its first losing session in about a week.
It was plumbing a five-month low of 103.19 last week, weighed down by worries that Trump’s trade war could trigger a US recession.
