Investing.com - The euro pushed higher against the weaker dollar on Tuesday as diminished expectations for a rate hike by the Federal Reserve this year pressured the greenback lower.
EUR/USD rose 0.46% to 1.1237 from 1.1186 late Monday.
The dollar remained on the back foot after Friday’s unexpectedly weak U.S. jobs report prompted investors to abandon expectations for a rate hike by the Fed before the end of 2015.
The Labor Department reported that the U.S. economy added just 142,000 jobs last month, well below expectations of the 201,000 expected by economists.
August’s reading was revised down to 135,000, from the initial reported figure of 173,000.
The report underlined fears that a slowdown in global economic growth has spread to the U.S. economy and prompted investors to push back expectations on the timing of an initial rate hike by the U.S. central bank to early 2016.
Data on Tuesday showed that the U.S. trade deficit widened by the most in five months in August as exports dropped.
The Commerce Department reported that the trade gap widened 15.6% to $48.3 billion, from $41.9 billion in July.
Exports fell 2% to the lowest level since October 2012, while imports rose 1.2%.
The U.S. dollar index, which measures the greenback’s strength against a trade-weighted basket of six major currencies, was last down 0.40% to 95.84.
Elsewhere, the euro was higher against the yen, with EUR/JPY rising 0.28% to 135.16.
Earlier on Tuesday data showed that German factory orders fell unexpectedly in August, adding to concerns that slowing global growth is starting to affect the euro area’s largest economy.
German industrial orders fell 1.8% from a month earlier, compared to expectations for a 0.5% increase after a 2.2% drop in July.