Financial safety

Trump ignites political fight over U.S. banking law reforms

Though the order was short on specifics, financial markets embraced Trump's signal that looser banking regulation is coming and pushed bank stocks higher. The Dow Jones U.S. Banks stocks index closed up 2.6 percent. .DJUSBK [.N]

At a White House forum on Friday with U.S. business leaders, including JPMorgan Chase's (JPM.N) CEO Jamie Dimon, Trump said his administration expects "to be cutting a lot out of Dodd-Frank."

That will involve a lot more than issuing an order, said former Democratic congressman Barney Frank, co-author of the 2010 Dodd-Frank Wall Street reform law that raised capital requirements for banks, restricted their trading by means of the "Volcker Rule," and created the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau to guard against predatory lending.

Trump "can’t make any substantial change in the financial reform bill without Congress,” Frank told Reuters. "The language in the order doesn’t do anything. It tells the secretary of the Treasury to give them something to read. The tone of it is to weaken the bill.”