Trump Trade: President anticipated to sign TikTok agreement Thursday

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 with this daily recap compiled by The Fly: 

TIKTOK DEAL: President Donald Trump is anticipated sign an agreement on Thursday to facilitate the sale of TikTok from China-based ByteDance to a group of U.S.-based investors, NBC News’ Julie Tsirkin, Monica Alba, Tara Prindiville and Alexandra Marquez report, citing two senior White House officials. Members of the Trump administration have been indicating in recent days that a deal was being finalized between officials from the U.S. and China, the authors note. Once the agreement is implemented, TikTok’s U.S. operations would be overseen by a new joint business, with ByteDance holding less than 20% of the stock of the new entity, the authors say. Companies reportedly involved in the deal include Oracle (ORCL), Silver Lake, and Andreessen Horowitz. Publicly traded companies in the social media space include Meta Platforms (META), Pinterest (PINS), Reddit (RDDT) and Snap (SNAP).

H-1B VISAS: Judiciary Committee Chairman Chuck Grassley and ranking member Dick Durbin sent letters on Wednesday evening to the country’s largest users of H-1B visas – including Amazon.com (AMZN), Apple (AAPL) and JPMorgan Chase (JPM) – asking the companies to explain why they continue to hire thousands of foreign employees on H-1B visas while also cutting other jobs, reported The Wall Street Journal’s Anvee Bhutani. Less than a week after President Trump announced an overhaul of the H-1B program, the senators asked for detailed information on how many H-1B workers the companies employ, their wages, and whether American workers have been displaced in the process, the Journal noted.

GOVERNMENT SHUTDOWN: The White House circulated a directive late Wednesday to federal agencies asking them to explore firing at least some of their workers if a government shutdown happens, amplifying the stakes of Washington’s ongoing gridlock, Yahoo! Finance’s Ben Werschkul reports. The memo from President Trump’s Office of Management and Budget directs executive branch agencies “to use this opportunity to consider Reduction in Force notices,” adding that the possible permanent cuts would be in areas “not consistent with the president’s priorities.”