Trump Signs Orders to Roll Back Dodd-Frank, Fiduciary Rule

President Trump on Friday signed an executive order calling for a massive rollback of consumer protection and banking regulation laws.

“Making the financial system more fair and transparent is essential to providing low-income and minority communities with more economic stability,” said Wade Henderson, president and CEO of The Leadership Conference. “Over the past decade, our country has learned hard lessons about what happens when the game is rigged and regulators turn their backs to reckless subprime mortgages, payday loan debt traps, and shady bank account fees. President Trump seems bent on forgetting those lessons and on betraying the people he professed to represent when he talked about a ‘rigged’ system.”

Trump’s order to scale back the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act of 2010 – an important step toward reining in abusive and reckless practices that were at the heart of the financial crisis – was also met with criticism from Lisa Donner, executive director of Americans for Financial Reform.

“Wall Street titan Goldman Sachs seems to be taking over financial regulation in the United States, trying to make it easier for them and other big banks like Wells Fargo to steal from their customers and destabilize the economy,” Donner said. “That is a betrayal of the promises Trump made to stand up to Wall Street. If they succeed it will have painful consequences.”

Trump also signed an order on Friday directing the U.S. Department of Labor (DOL) to overturn its fiduciary rule, which requires all financial advisors who give retirement investment advice to act in the best interest of their clients.

The Leadership Conference strongly supported the rule, which DOL finalized in April 2016.