The daily business briefing: March 12, 2019

1. FAA says Boeing 737 Max 8 still safe to fly

The Federal Aviation Administration said Monday that the Boeing 737 Max 8 jetliner is still airworthy despite two deadly crashes in five months. Aviation officials in several countries have temporarily grounded the popular new planes following the latest crash, involving an Ethiopian Airlines Boeing 737 Max 8 that went down shortly after takeoff on Sunday, killing all 157 people on board. A Lion Air Boeing 737 Max 8 crashed into the Java Sea in October, killing 189 people. The FAA said in its notice that it was too early to "draw any conclusions" connecting the causes of the two crashes. The FAA said, however, that it expected to require design changes to an automated flight-control system that some believe contributed to the Lion Air crash.

CNBC

2. Theresa May wins last-minute concession before Brexit vote

British Prime Minister Theresa May on Monday secured legally binding assurances that the European Union won't use the Brexit withdrawal agreement to keep the U.K. entangled in EU rules "indefinitely." The agreement guarantees that the so-called Irish backstop, intended to keep open the border between Britain's Northern Ireland and EU member Ireland, won't tie the U.K. to EU customs and trade regulations forever. May rushed to Strasbourg, France, to strike the deal with European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker in a bid to avoid a devastating loss in a planned Tuesday vote on her Brexit plan less than three weeks before Britain is scheduled to leave the European trading bloc.

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Reuters The Washington Post

3. Trump proposes boosting spending on military, border wall

President Trump on Monday proposed a $4.7 trillion budget that would boost defense spending by $750 billion and include $8.6 billion to build barriers on the U.S.-Mexico border. The budget also seeks to sharply cut spending on such social programs as Medicaid, food stamps, and environmental protection. Democrats flatly rejected Trump's plan, saying it would go nowhere. Trump's annual budget proposal to Congress nearly doubles the national debt growth over his 2018 projections. In his 2018 budget proposal, Trump estimated America's national debt would expand from about $14.2 trillion in 2016 to $18.6 trillion in 2027. In his new budget, America's debt would grow by more than $8 trillion to $24 trillion by 2027.

The Washington Post The New York Times

4. Stocks surge with a boost from tech shares

Stocks surged on Monday as tech shares rose, offsetting Boeing's 5.3 percent decline after Sunday's deadly crash of a 737 Max 8 jet in Ethiopia. Apple rose by 3.5 percent after Bank of America Merrill Lynch upgraded the iPhone maker's stock from neutral to buy. Facebook shares also gained, rising by 1.5 percent after a similar upgrade by Nomura Instinet. The Dow Jones Industrial Average gained 0.8 percent on Monday. The S&P 500 surged by 1.5 percent, and the Nasdaq jumped by 2 percent. U.S. stock index futures edged higher early Monday. Futures for the Dow were up by 0.1 percent, while those of the S&P 500 and the Nasdaq gained 0.2 percent and 0.3 percent, respectively.

CNBC

5. U.S. pressures Germany to ban Huawei 5G equipment

The Trump administration has warned Germany it will limit intelligence sharing if Berlin lets Chinese tech giant Huawei Technologies build Germany's next-generation 5G mobile-internet infrastructure, The Wall Street Journal reported Monday. The U.S. ambassador to Germany, Richard Grenell, said in a letter to Germany's economics minister that the country should prevent Huawei and other Chinese companies from doing the work because of the risk that China could use the gear for spying. German officials have told the U.S. as recently as last month that they "weren't ready" to ban Huawei equipment, and that they were not sure that it would be legal.

The Wall Street Journal CNN