President Donald Trump is expected to move forward with his plans to roll back the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform Act by signing an executive order Friday requiring a review of the comprehensive set of financial laws enacted after the crisis, the Wall Street Journal reported Friday.
Trump spoke often of pushing for regulatory rollback during his campaign. After his election, Trump’s transition team declared that the Trump administration plans to “dismantle” Dodd-Frank.
And recently, Vice President Mike Pence and House Financial Services Committee Chairman Rep. Jeb Hensarling, R-Texas, both declared that dismantling Dodd-Frank remains a top priority of the Trump administration.
Now, Trump is expected to take his first whack at Dodd-Frank today.
Speaking before a meeting to top business executives on Friday, Trump said they plan to "cut a lot out of Dodd-Frank."
President Trump says he plans to roll back Dodd-Frank financial regulations because so many friends of his in business can't borrow money pic.twitter.com/Ibm9qeRbJK
— Bradd Jaffy (@BraddJaffy) February 3, 2017
And here are the details from the Wall Street Journal:
“Americans are going to have better choices and Americans are going to have better products because we’re not going to burden the banks with literally hundreds of billions of dollars of regulatory costs every year,” White House National Economic Council Director Gary Cohn said in an interview with The Wall Street Journal. “The banks are going to be able to price product more efficiently and more effectively to consumers.”
Mr. Trump also will sign an executive order that directs the Treasury secretary and financial regulators to come up with a plan to revise rules the Dodd-Frank law put in place.
Cohn joined the Trump administration from Goldman Sachs, where he was the bank’s No. 2 executive. But he’s been quiet since leaving Goldman Sachs, although that changed on Friday, when he was front and center, speaking to multiple media outlets about the president’s Dodd-Frank plans.
A quick review of Twitter shows that Cohn appeared on CNBC, Bloomberg, and Fox Business on Friday morning, touting the president’s plans.
Cohn told the WSJ that the executive order Trump is expected to sign on Friday is a “table setter for a bunch of stuff that is coming” related to Dodd-Frank.
Again, from the WSJ:
Mr. Cohn said the actions are intended to pave the way for additional orders that would affect the postcrisis Financial Stability Oversight Council, the mechanism for winding down a giant faltering financial company, and the way the government supervises big financial firms that aren’t traditional banks, often referred to as systemically important financial institutions.
Given that the text of the executive order is not yet public, it’s unknown just how much impact Friday’s action will have, but it’s clear that the Trump administration intends to move forward in its deregulation efforts.
