USD/CAD holds onto Friday’s losses around 1.3800, investors await Fed-BoC policy

• The USD/CAD pair clings to Friday’s losses near 1.3800, driven by strong Canadian employment data.
• Investors expect the BoC to hold interest rates steady and the Fed to cut them on Wednesday.
• US President Trump refrained from providing a timeframe about when the White House will resume trade talks with Canada.

The USD/CAD pair trades weakly near its 11-week low around 1.3800 during the Asian trading session on Monday. The Loonie pair fell drastically on Friday after the release of the Canadian labor market report for November, which showed that the Unemployment Rate dropped significantly to 6.5% from 6.9% in October due to a significant increase in part-time workers.

Full-time jobs created by the Canadian economy in November were 53.6K, slightly lower than 66.6K in October, while economists anticipated that employers would have shed 5K jobs.

Strong Canadian employment data has diminished hopes of an interest rate cut by the Bank of Canada (BoC) for the monetary policy scheduled on Wednesday. The BoC is expected to hold interest rates steady at 2.25%.

However, the uncertainty over trade relations between the United States (US) and Canada still remains a major hang for the Canadian Dollar. Following the meeting Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney and Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum on Friday, US President Donald Trump stated that talks were "very good, very productive", but didn’t clarify on when Washington will resume trade talks with Canada.

US President Trump said, “We’ll see,” when asked if he would restart trade talks with his northern neighbour, cbc.ca reported.

Meanwhile, the US Dollar (USD) trades with caution ahead of the Federal Reserve’s (Fed) monetary policy announcement on Wednesday. The Fed is widely anticipated to cut interest rates by 25 basis points (bps) to 3.50%-3.75% as labor market conditions continue to deteriorate.