Can Donald Trump End Dodd-Frank Banking Regulation?

It was one of his campaign promises, but now that he will be president, can he really uphold it? Donald Trump declared he was going to undo the Dodd-Frank Act, but in order to do this, he would have to get a lot of people to buy into it. The Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act was signed into effect by President Barack Obama on July 21, 2010. It came as a sweeping response to the financial crisis (Great Recession), and is the biggest change to US financial regulations since the time of the Great Depression. The importance of the Act has been undisputed, though the severity of it has garnered many critics from the GOP.

The practicality of Trump’s desire might be difficult to accomplish, given the strong public backing of the Act. Speaking to City A.M., Monica Gogna, financial regulation partner at Ropes & Gray, said “I wonder how high this will be on Trump’s priority list in January and, if it were high on his priority list, which I wonder about, one of the things that he’s going to have to grapple with is the existing system of checks and balances within the US governmental system.” Despite the regulation, banks have still been able to manipulate the market, with the prime example being Wells Fargo’s creation of two million accounts without their customers’ awareness or approval. There are those who believe Trump never believed it could be done, and it was only a populist tactic.