A Reuters report stating that the trade deal between Washington and Beijing will not be signed in 2019 has excited market participants more than the publication of the minutes from the October meeting of the Federal Reserve.

China is demanding more concessions from the United States for a deal. The American side is heating up the situation. The US Senate passed a bill to support protesters in Hong Kong, and White's head Donald Trump said that without signing the first phase of the agreement, tariffs on Chinese goods will be increased.

Five weeks ago, US Treasury Secretary Stephen Mnuchin announced that this deadline would be enough to complete trade negotiations under phase 1. However, time has passed, but the situation has not changed.

Although Beijing representatives claim that the deal can be concluded in early December, and Chinese Vice Premier Liu He remains cautiously optimistic, so far these are just words. The Rubicon could be on December 15. The next increase in US tariffs by $156 billion in Chinese imports is scheduled for this day. If the White House postpones this decision, it will be an indication that the negotiations between Washington and Beijing are going well. Otherwise, another escalation of the trade conflict will follow.

It should be noted that the trade war is one of the important factors in changing the Fed's worldview.

A minutes released yesterday from the October FOMC meeting stated that the US central bank continues to significantly consider the risks of the prospects for global economic growth and international trade. The regulator also expressed concern that the problems of industry, export and business investment may have a negative impact on the US labor market, which will slow down consumer activity and the growth of national GDP. At the last meeting, Fed officials talked a lot about the threats to the US economy, but they ignored factors that could lead to tightening monetary policy. This allowed Nordea to evaluate the mood inside the FOMC as dovish.

The EUR/USD pair reacted to the publication of the minutes from the October meeting of the Fed by declining, but then it managed to recover quite quickly. Now the filing goes to the side of the ECB. However, investors are unlikely to see anything new in the report from the last meeting of the Governing Council. Most likely, the denouement will come on Friday. Data on business activity in Germany and the eurozone for November will be released tomorrow, and ECB President Christine Lagarde will unveil her views on monetary policy. If the latter will differ from the position of its predecessor, Mario Draghi, then the EUR/USD bulls will receive a serious argument in favor of continuing the rally, at least to 1.1200.