Week In Review: How Trump's Policies Moved Stocks - Sept. 28, 2019

Trump calls out Crowdstrike in Ukraine call, U.S. and Japan ink trade-enhancement pact

Catch up on the top industries and stocks that were impacted, or were predicted to be impacted, by the comments, actions and policies of President Donald Trump and his administration with this weekly recap compiled by The Fly:

1. U.S.-CHINA TRADE: China's government said earlier this week that importers have agreed to buy American soybeans and pork, according to the Associated Press. Publicly traded companies in the agriculture space include Agrium (AGU), Andersons (ANDE), Archer Daniels (ADM),Bunge (BG), CF Industries (CF), Compass Minerals (CMP), Intrepid Potash (IPI), Potash (POT) and Syngenta (SYT).

Potentially opening a new front in the ongoing trade fight, Bloomberg reported on Friday that the U.S. is reviewing the potential to impose limits on U.S. portfolio flows into China and that President Trump is said to support a review of such investment limits. There is no timeline for a presidential action on China capital restrictions, which could affect Chinese stocks in U.S. indexes, said the news service. Additionally, Bloomberg said that Trump officials are considering de-listing Chinese companies from U.S. stock exchanges. Major Chinese companies that have stocks trading in the U.S. include Alibaba (BABA), Baidu (BIDU), PetroChina (PTR), JD.com (JD), Pinduoduo (PDD), China Telecom (CHA), NetEase (NTES) and Tencent Music (TME).

2. U.S., JAPAN SIGN TRADE PACT: U.S. President Trump and Japan's Prime Minister Shinzo Abe have inked a trade-enhancement pact that will lower agricultural tariffs in Japan, industrial tariffs in the U.S. and establish new rules for digital trade between the two countries, the Wall Street Journal's Vivian Salama and Josh Zumbrun reported on Wednesday. The limited agreement, reached on the sidelines of the UN General Assembly, is possibly the first step in a broader trade deal between the two sides, the authors said. "Japanese tariffs will now be significantly lower or eliminated completely on beef, pork, wheat, cheese, corn, wine and so much more," the president said, adding that the accord will open markets for roughly $7B in U.S. agricultural products.

3. CROWDSTRIKE, UKRAINE CALL: Crowdstrike (CRWD) was in the spotlight on Wednesday following the release of the transcript summary of President Trump's phone call with Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelensky. According to the document, Trump asked Zelensky to "do us a favor" and "find out what happened with this whole situation with Ukraine" with regards to Crowdstrike. The cyber-security company was retained by the Democratic National Committee to investigate the hack of its computer servers during the 2016 election, which Crowdstrike traced back to a pair of hacker groups with suspected Russian ties, becoming one of the early moving pieces of a probe of foreign interference in the 2016 election led by special counsel Robert Mueller. Trump has long questioned Crowdstrike's conclusions, pushing a theory that the DNC had hid one of its servers from the FBI because it had information about who was actually responsible for the hack. During the call with Zelensky, the President suggested that someone in Ukraine might be in possession of the "missing" server that would exonerate Russia.

Additionally, the President urged Zelensky to probe Joe Biden and his son, Hunter Biden, who sat on the board of a Ukrainian natural gas company. The release of the transcript summary follows a move in Congress to open a formal impeachment inquiry of the President as democratic lawmakers argue that the request to investigate Joe Biden and his son would constitute an abuse of presidential power. While the transcript shows Trump saying "The United States has been very, very good to Ukraine," there's no mention of an explicit quid pro quo.

4. DRUG PRICING: Passing a bill to control drug prices will be essential to Republicans "keeping a majority in the Senate," Senate Finance Chairman Chuck Grassley said, predicting the task will probably slip into next year, Politico's Sarah Karlin-Smith wrote on Wednesday. The legislation, which is significantly different than Speaker Nancy Pelosi's drug price plan, will probably get pushed to early next year, he said. Publicly traded companies in the space include AstraZeneca (AZN), Bristol-Myers (BMY), Eli Lilly (LLY), GlaxoSmithKline (GSK), Johnson & Johnson (JNJ), Merck (MRK), Novartis (NVS), Pfizer (PFE), Roche (RHHBY) and Sanofi (SNY).