NZ dollar steady on positive China trade news

The kiwi was trading at 66.06 US cents at 5pm.

The New Zealand dollar was little changed with sentiment buoyed by China announcing it will cut import tariffs on a range of goods from January 1.

The kiwi was trading at 66.06 US cents at 5pm in Wellington after ending at 66.01 cents in New York on Friday. The trade-weighted index was at 72.71 points from 72.64.

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"There was some very mild kiwi upside on headlines that came out mid-afternoon from China," said Mike Shirley, a dealer at Kiwibank.

Bloomberg reported that the tariffs will be cut on frozen pork, frozen avocados, non-frozen orange juice, new asthma and diabetes drugs as well as key components and machines for manufacturing integrated circuits and on some logs and paper products.

The news agency said the move isn't directly related to the US-China trade war but it supports Beijing's claim to be further opening up its economy.

Its tariff reductions follow a similar move last year.

China's announcement also said that goods from a range of countries including New Zealand will have even lower levies because of re-negotiated free trade deals.

On Friday, US President Donald Trump tweeted that he had had "a very good talk" by phone with China's President Xi Jinping and that a formal signing of the two nation's preliminary trade deal is being arranged.

Shirley said that otherwise trading was very quiet. "I think the entire world has called it quits for Christmas."

The New Zealand dollar was at 95.64 Australian cents from 95.66, unchanged at 50.77 British pence, at 59.61 euro cents from 59.55 euro cents, at 72.25 yen from 72.20 yen and at 4.6316 Chinese yuan from 4.6228.

The two-year swap rate rose to a bid price of 1.2507 per cent from 1.2280 per cent on Friday while 10-year swaps eased to 1.7525 per cent from 1.7750 per cent.