The Australian dollar is down against US counterpart which has also weakened despite there being no single event to pressure it.

At 0635 AEST on Thursday, the Australian dollar was worth 79.65 US cents, down from 79.71 US cents on Wednesday.

Westpac’s Imre Speizer said the US dollar had fallen amid an unhelpful background including US president Donald Trump talking down the greenback in a Wall Street Journal interview and threats of US measures to restrict trade with China.

But, that had not helped Australia’s currency maintain a short push back toward 80 US cents.

“The dollar bloc currencies were mild underperformers on several crosses…,” he said in a Thursday morning note.

“Both AUD and NZD rose about half a US cent from their overnight lows, AUD back up near 0.8000 while NZD recovered back to 0.7450.

“(The Australlian dollar) has been struggling to build a beach head above 0.8000 but the downside is also limited by USD weakness.”

He said the focus would be on Friday’s monetary statement from the Reserve Bank of Australia on Friday and, before that, the balance of trade data from the Australian Bureau of Statistics and the Ai Group’s services PMI on Thursday.

The local currency is also lower against the euro but flat against the yen.