By Kevin Buckland
TOKYO (Reuters) -Most Asian equity markets struggled on Friday, despite record highs for Wall Street overnight, as U.S. President Donald Trump’s deadline for trade deals loomed next week.
The dollar retraced some of Thursday’s gains with U.S. markets already shut for the week, as traders considered the impact of the sweeping spending bill Trump is about to sign into law.
Japan’s Nikkei rose 0.3% as of 0152 GMT after flipping between gains and losses in early trading.
Hong Kong’s Hang Seng slumped 1.3%, while mainland Chinese blue chips edged slightly lower.
Taiwan’s equity benchmark shed early gains to decline 0.2%. South Korea’s KOSPI sank more than 1%.
U.S. S&P 500 futures edged down 0.2%, following a 0.8% overnight advance for the cash index to a fresh all-time closing peak. Wall Street is closed Friday for Independence Day.
Investors cheered a surprisingly robust jobs report on Thursday in sending all three of the main U.S. equity indexes climbing in a shortened session.
Following the close, the House narrowly approved Trump’s signature, 869-page bill, which would add $3.4 trillion to the nation’s $36.2 trillion debt, according to the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office.
Trump also said he would start sending out letters to trade partners with their tariff rates, as deals remained elusive ahead of the July 9 deadline.
The U.S. President said he expected “a couple” more agreements after announcing a deal with Vietnam on Wednesday to add to framework agreements with China and Britain as the only successes so far.
U.S. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said earlier this week that a deal with India is close. However agreements with Japan and South Korea, once touted by the White House as likely to be among the earliest to be announced, appear to have broken down.
“It is now just waiting for July 9,” said Tony Sycamore, an analyst at IG, with the market’s lack of optimism for deals responsible for some of the equity weakness around the region, particularly Japan and South Korea.
At the same time, Thursday’s jobs data shows “the U.S. economy is holding together better than most people expected, which suggests to me that markets can easily continue to do better” from here, Sycamore said.
The jobs data saw traders take any expectations for a Federal Reserve interest rate cut this month off the table.
The U.S. dollar rallied, taking it up as much as 0.7% versus a basket of major peers on Thursday before it pared its advance to end the session with a 0.4% rise.
Early on Friday, the U.S. currency gave back a little of those gains, slipping 0.2% to 144.62 yen and edging down 0.1% to 0.7942 Swiss franc.
The euro added 0.1% to $1.1766, while sterling traded flat at $1.3650.
The U.S. Treasury bond market is closed Friday for the holiday, but 10-year yields rose 4.7 basis points (bps) to 4.34% while the 2-year yield jumped 9.3 bps to 3.882%.
Gold inched up 0.1% to $3,329.54 per ounce.
Brent crude futures rose 1 cent to $68.81 a barrel, while U.S. West Texas Intermediate crude firmed 3 cents to $67.03.
(Reporting by Kevin Buckland; Editing by Stephen Coates)
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