Shutdown deal reached, Microsoft's Smith sees federal privacy laws as "inevitable"

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. GOVERNMENT SHUTDOWN DEAL REACHED: On Thursday, the U.S. Senate was unable to pass either of two competing bills to fund the government and end the shutdown. However, on Friday, Congressional leaders and President Trump reached a tentative deal to temporarily reopen the government without any funding for a border wall. The pact will reopen the government for three weeks, until February 15, while leaving the border wall funds to further talks.

2. AIRPORT DELAYS: Hours prior to the shutdown deal being announced, the FAA briefly halted incoming flights at New York's LaGuardia Airport on Friday morning, citing a shortage of air traffic controllers. The FAA said it had "experienced a slight increase in sick leave at two facilities" and was "mitigating the impact by augmenting staffing, rerouting traffic, and increasing spacing between aircraft when needed." Publicly traded airlines include American Airlines (AAL), Delta Air Lines (DAL), JetBlue (JBLU), Southwest (LUV) and United Continental (UAL).

3. MERGER DELAYS: In a research note to investors earlier this week, JPMorgan analyst Jeffrey Zekauskas said he believes there are negative short-term implications to Linde plc (LIN) due to effects from the partial government shutdown. The new Linde is unable to fully integrate its Praxair operations with Linde AG until the domestic assets are sold to CVC/Messer, which is unlikely until the government re-opens, he contended. Amcor and Bemis (BMS) also said that while they have made significant progress toward closing the all-stock transaction announced on August 6, 2018, antitrust approval and completion of shareholder meeting documentation review by the SEC have been delayed in the U.S. due to the partial government shutdown. As a result, it is now anticipated the transaction will close in the second quarter of calendar year 2019.

4. TWITTER: Shares of Twitter (TWTR) gained on Friday after Andrew Left of Citron Research issued a new report and said that the emergence of Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez has changed his view on the stock. The "Anti-Trump" freshman U.S. lawmaker, often referred to as simply "AOC," has adopted Twitter as her medium of choice and her emergence "will keep Twitter the idea leader for the next presidential election," according to Citron. Citron said it is not making a valuation call or telling investors to run out and buy Twitter stock. "We are simply expressing when a story has meaningfully changed. AOC should stabilize the MAU of Twitter and more importantly bring in a new generation of Twitter users," the firm said.

5. 'INEVITABLE': Microsoft (MSFT) president and chief legal officer Brad Smith said on Thursday that new U.S. federal privacy laws are inevitable following Facebook's (FB) giant Cambridge Analytica scandal in 2018, Business Insider reported. "It was one of these watershed years where I doubt that we'll ever go back to what was there before. People now recognize that the impact of technology is so pervasive that it requires that new steps be taken to address what's on people's minds," Smith said. "It is possible we will see a law passed in 2019. It's more likely that we'll see a law passed in 2020 or 21. It is now a historical inevitability that a law will be passed by Congress."

6. TRADE TALKS: The Trump administration was said to have rejected an offer by two Chinese vice-ministers to travel to the U.S. this week for preparatory trade talks, the Financial Times said Tuesday, citing people briefed on the negotiations. However, afterwards Larry Kudlow, Director of the National Economic Council, said the U.S. is in "constant communication" with China about trade and that the earlier report about meetings having been cancelled were "not true." On Thursday, Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross said during a CNBC interview that the U.S. is "miles and miles" away from a trade resolution with China.