President Donald Trump promised a room of CEOs on Tuesday that he would pursue “a very major haircut on Dodd-Frank,” the package of financial reforms passed in the wake of the 2008 financial crisis.
After taking questions from the business leaders in the room, among them NYSE Group President Thomas W. Farley and Mastercard President and CEO Ajay Banga, Trump said that he would trim regulations that had made bank executives “petrified” of government regulators.
“You look at the folks from government that are running all over the banks,” he said. “They are running the banks. The people that are really the head people, they’re petrified of the regulators. They’re petrified. They can’t move. The regulators are running the banks. So we’re going to do a very major haircut on Dodd-Frank.”
“We want strong restrictions, we want strong regulation, but not regulation that makes it impossible for the banks to loan to people that are going to create jobs,” he continued. “But that’s just one example. We’re doing so many cuts on regulations.”
Though Republicans in the House have long promised to dramatically cut back on the financial reform package, the vice chairman of the House Financial Services Committee told the Wall Street Journal Monday that the slow progress of House Republicans’ failed effort to repeal and replace Obamacare had delayed the effort.
“The whole year is shifted because we have taken longer on health care,” Rep. Patrick McHenry (R-NC) said, adding that “when it is warm out … perhaps June, July would be my hope,” for addressing financial regulation.
McHenry acknowledged, though, that the fate of such an effort in the U.S. Senate, where Democrats have sufficient votes to filibuster, is an “open question.”
On Feb. 3, Trump signed a largely symbolic executive order instructing the Treasury Secretary to review laws and regulations affecting the financial industry.