While many questions remain about how Mr. Trump will govern, a consensus emerged Wednesday in many circles in Washington and on Wall Street about at least one aspect of his impending presidency: Mr. Trump is likely to seek vast cuts in regulations across the banking, health care and energy industries.
“This is going to be a president who will be the biggest regulatory reformer since Ronald Reagan,” Stephen Moore, one of Mr. Trump’s economic advisers said in an interview on Wednesday. “There are just so many regulations that could be eased.”
Although Mr. Trump is a maverick politician, his anti-regulation stance is that of an old-school Republican. It is driven by a belief that the economy will grow faster if businesses are freed from the long arm of the federal government.
Or at least that is what some analysts and economists say they think is Mr. Trump’s rationale. Even after a long campaign of endless rallies and debates, Mr. Trump and his closest advisers have disclosed relatively few specific economic policy proposals.
And some of what he has proposed seems contradictory. For example, he has said he would roll back the Dodd-Frank financial overhaul, while his party platform calls for breaking up the big banks.
Mr. Trump will probably find common ground with many Republicans in Congress, including Speaker Paul D. Ryan, on cutting regulation. They clashed during the campaign over Mr. Trump’s past conduct toward women and inflammatory statements about ethnic groups, and many Republicans do not see eye to eye with Mr. Trump on immigration and trade.
“But Ryan and Trump are like-minded on regulation in a way they are not on trade and immigration,” said Ted Gayer, director of the economic studies program at the Brookings Institution and a former Treasury official under President George W. Bush. “That is red meat for both of them.”
Here is a rundown on how Mr. Trump’s presidency could gut regulations from Wall Street to Silicon Valley:
The New York Stock Exchange. The Dodd-Frank Act might survive a Trump administration. CreditLucas Jackson/ReutersA clean Republican sweep of the White House and Congress would normally be greeted by loud cheers across Wall Street.
But Mr. Trump’s victory is not a clear boon for bankers and financiers in the way that past Republican wins have been.
On paper, many of his campaign proposals appear to favor banks and investors, including a promise to undo Dodd-Frank, which was passed after the 2008 financial crisis.
Yet repealing the law and its many rules seems unlikely to gain much traction in Congress. And even many banks admit they have spent so much time and money complying with the law, they would rather keep it.
Several Obama administration officials said on Wednesday that they did not expect Congress to completely repeal Dodd-Frank. Instead of undertaking such a costly and controversial effort, one likely possibility is that the Trump administration and Congress would take aim at a handful of specific rules that most irritate the banks, including what is known as the Volcker Rule, a centerpiece of Dodd-Frank that prohibits banks from placing risky bets with their own money.
Otherwise, many of the expected changes would benefit small and midsize banks rather than Wall Street banks. Regulators, for example, could raise the size at which a bank is subject to Dodd-Frank’s enhanced oversight.
Other pieces of Dodd-Frank could be picked off, like reining in the authority of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, a hallmark of the Obama administration.
Mr. Trump could prune other low-hanging financial regulations, including a newly enacted Department of Labor rule that holds investment advisers liable for certain advice to their clients.
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