President-elect Donald Trump would be able to roll back financial regulations worth at least $1.7 billion to the industry and others that must meet those rules, according to new analysis.
There are nine rule-writing projects recently completed by regulators that Trump would be able to immediately rescind after taking office, as the incoming president has vowed to dismantle the Dodd-Frank financial reform law.
{mosads}Making major changes to the law could be politically tricky, given that easing rules on the financial sector typically serves as a potent attack for advocates for tougher rules. Democrats are likely to fight hard on making wholesale changes to the law, enacted in 2010 following the financial crisis.
But the conservative American Action Forum has identified nine regulations that Trump would be able to immediately shelve, even with no help from Congress. That’s because those rules have been completed within the last 60 legislative days of the current Congress. The Congressional Review Act empowers the next Congress and administration to rescind those new rules until Congress decides to give them the green light.
None of the rules are cornerstones of Dodd-Frank; nearly all the major rules have already been completed and would require legislation to alter or repeal. But they do add up to a significant amount of work for those who would have to comply — $1.7 billion in estimated costs and 1.2 million compliance hours. The rules cover a wide range of issues, including detailing how records and data should be kept, as well as several rules aimed at the derivatives marketplace.
The largest rule on the chopping block is a project from the Securities and Exchange Commission. Those rules, finalized in June, require companies to publicly disclose any payments made to governments worldwide to facilitate the extraction of oil, natural gas or other minerals.
The regulations, aimed at fighting corruption and keeping governments accountable for these types of projects, were estimated to cost companies $1.2 billion and require 217,408 hours to comply.
And there are other unfinished pieces of regulatory work that also stand to hit a roadblock, whether they are completed in President Obama’s final days in office or as Trump takes control.
One of the largest looming on the horizon is a rule-writing project from the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. That agency has expressed a desire to curb the use of “mandatory arbitration” language in consumer financial contracts, which bars people from taking companies to court in class-action lawsuits. That rule was proposed in May and has yet to be finalized. It has already attracted criticism from Republicans and industry backers, and faces a difficult path to completion with a Trump administration on its way.