U.S. President Donald Trump said Friday afternoon that a deal was reached to “end the shutdown” and reopen the federal government.
The deal allows the government to remain open through Feb. 15, which would give a bipartisan committee of lawmakers 21 days to work out a border security package. Now the pressure is on lawmakers as President Trump said he will declare a national emergency if there is no deal with Congress at the end of the 21 days. The shutdown was over President Trump’s call for funding to his U.S.-Mexico border wall.
The deal puts 800,000 furloughed federal workers back to work, as well as gives them their back pay.
The shutdown lasted five weeks, the longest in the government’s history. Legislation still needs to be passed in order to temporarily reopen the federal government. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell said the Senate will pass the requisite legislation on Friday.
And although it couldn’t be immediately determined what the impact of the shutdown might be on the retail sector at large, economists at Barclays this week lowered their first quarter forecast for GDP growth to an annualized rate of 2.5 percent from an earlier projection of 3.0 percent.
Separately, the Conference Board on Thursday said its Leading Economic Index slipped 0.1 percent in December to 111.7. The slight dip suggests that the U.S. economic growth rate may slow down this year,” said Ataman Ozyildirim, director of economic research at The Conference Board. He added that the deceleration would likely be towards 2 percent growth by the end of 2019.