India’s rupee surged to a seven-month high, with USD/INR dropping as much as 0.9% to 83.7538 on Friday, driven by optimism over US-China trade talks and hopes for an early India-US trade deal. Traders were caught off-guard by the rally, aided by continued foreign inflows and no recent Reserve Bank of India FX intervention. Karur Vysya Bank’s treasury head noted the rupee may test 83.50 but likely won’t strengthen much beyond.