The US dollar was trading softer against the yen in afternoon trade here after a brief respite in early afternoon on a weak Japanese trade report, dealers said. Renewed speculation of a China yuan revaluation has been putting pressure on the dollar. The dollar also slipped marginally against the euro in Asia as the single currency took back some ground after European Central Bank officials attempted to douse lingering concerns over an expected ECB rate cut. The dollar had already weakened in New York on renewed yuan revaluation talk fueled by numerous developments which suggested pressure on China to make its currency regime more flexible would mount in coming days. Additionally, both Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan and Treasury Secretary John Snow are scheduled to testify on US-China economic relations before the US Senate Finance Committee tomorrow. The dollar-yen opened beneath its New York lows this morning in Asia but soon began a slow grind higher with banks out of Tokyo and Sydney cited as the main buyers, with some attributing the rise to Japan's May trade surplus data issued early this morning. The merchandise trade surplus in May fell a seasonally adjusted 1.0 pct from the previous month to 690.0 bln yen and was down 68.3 pct year-on-year at 297.0 bln yen, well below expectations of a 521.0 bln surplus, according to the average of 21 forecasts in a Nihon Keizai Shimbun poll of brokerages and research houses. The demand ran into dollar-yen offers via the euro-yen cross after the former marked a 108.62 yen high. More dollar-yen offers subsequently emerged from 108.80 from both real money and option accounts while talk of an Asian central bank selling dollar-yen also capped the early rise.