“Everything is going to be looked at,” a senior White House official told reporters Thursday night. | AP Photo Trump plots overhaul of financial market rules It marks the first time the new administration has weighed in substantively in the debate over how to regulate the world’s largest financial markets.

President Donald Trump backed sweeping changes to U.S. financial regulations in an executive order on Friday, taking the first step toward undoing one of his predecessor's signature legislative initiatives.

The president also made a concrete move to roll back regulations implemented during former President Barack Obama's term by calling for the revamp of a controversial conflict-of-interest rule for financial brokers, which was championed by Sen. Elizabeth Warren.


Both moves are in line with Trump's vow to dismantle the Dodd-Frank Act, the landmark 2010 law that changed the way banks, asset managers and other financial firms do business.

Yet while Trump had promised to end Dodd-Frank on the campaign trail, he also criticized the elite banks and their ties to Hillary Clinton.

Friday's action sent another signal to Wall Street that a friendlier president was in the White House. Trump lauded his "friends" while announcing the regulatory moves and praised the wisdom of Jamie Dimon, the JPMorgan Chase CEO, who had a private meeting at the White House earlier this week and was there again on Friday.

“We expect to be cutting a lot out of Dodd-Frank because frankly I have so many people, friends of mine that have nice businesses and they can't borrow money,” Trump, flanked by Dimon and other CEOs, said before signing the documents. "The banks just won't let them borrow because of the rules and regulations in Dodd-Frank."

This marks the first time the new administration has weighed in substantively in the debate over how to regulate the world’s largest financial markets, though the executive order provides few details on how the administration would like to see the law changed.

“Everything is going to be looked at,” a senior White House official told reporters Thursday night.

“We really never have dealt with too big to fail. We haven’t really dealt with taxpayer bailouts. We haven't really dealt with” mortgage giants Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, he said.

The actions drew swift criticism from Warren and progressive groups, who pointed to Treasury Secretary nominee Steven Mnuchin's tenure at Goldman Sachs as an indication of who the order would benefit.

“Donald Trump talked a big game about Wall Street during his campaign — but as president, we're finding out whose side he's really on,” the Massachusetts senator said in a statement. “Today, after literally standing alongside big bank and hedge fund CEOs, he announced two new orders — one that will make it easier for investment advisers to cheat you out of your retirement savings, and another that will put two former Goldman Sachs executives in charge of gutting the rules that protect you from financial fraud and another economic meltdown.”

National Economic Council Director Gary Cohn, a former Goldman Sachs president, made the press rounds Friday morning, saying the administration is not "anti-regulation." Cohn, highly respected in the financial services industry, recently left Goldman with a payout of more than $100 million to join the White House.

"All banks have been shackled by these rules — big banks, small banks, medium-sized banks," Cohn said on Fox Business. "All banks have been under such regulatory scrutiny where they've been forced to literally build capital and build capital and instead of lending capital into their clients, and allowing their clients to grow their businesses and hire people and create jobs, they've been taking those reserves and taking that capital and hoarding it to meet the regulatory requirements."

The president is limited in what he can personally achieve because the regulations are implemented by independent agencies that don't answer to the White House, and actual changes to the law would be put in place by Congress. Still, he's in the process of naming nominees to key regulatory positions, and his moves are likely to further boost congressional efforts to revise Dodd-Frank.

Cohn indicated that more orders might be in store. “Today you’re going to start seeing the beginning of some of our executive actions to roll back regulation in the financial services market,” he said in an interview on Bloomberg TV.

The Dodd-Frank executive order directs the Treasury secretary to meet with all the top regulators, organized as the Financial Stability Oversight Council, and tell the president within 120 days what needs to be done to the law.

Banking officials and lobbyists said they are optimistic about the Trump administration and the Cabinet picks. They believe that the president's moves to reduce regulations and lower the corporate tax rate could boost their profits, and they say having a businessman in the White House means they are likely to have a sympathetic ear to their concerns.

A top financial executive in New York said top CEOs hadn't been briefed on the details ahead of time but were "generally hopeful" about the order. Still, "with Trump, you never know how long it will stay the way it seems now," the executive said. "They don't always seem that worried about the details."

A financial lobbyist said large banks and insurers are likely pleased. “If I'm Goldman Sachs and I'm Morgan Stanley, I would be feeling like I had a very good day," he said.

Another banking executive emphasized that large banks would be leery of completely rolling back Dodd-Frank, particularly after firms spent millions to comply with the law.

Yet banks have long called for a number of targeted changes to the law. Among them is the so-called Volcker rule, named after former Federal Reserve Chairman Paul Volcker, which bans banks from trading on their own accounts.

The senior White House official cited the need to fix that rule.

He also implicitly took aim at the CFPB, a brainchild of Warren that has become a major target for Republicans.

“Some of the rules may have even been unconstitutional in creating new agencies that don’t actually protect consumers,” the official said. He declined to say whether the president will remove CFPB Director Richard Cordray, but he said additional financial regulatory nominations would be coming "relatively soon."

Although congressional Republicans generally back changes to Dodd-Frank, it’s unclear whether Senate Republicans would be on board with major revisions. But the executive order and statements by administration officials may provide clearer direction to lawmakers beginning work on reforms who previously had little indication of what changes might please the White House.

House Financial Services Chairman Jeb Hensarling this month is expected to introduce a bill to overhaul significant parts of Dodd-Frank.

The action on the conflict-of-interest regulation — known as the fiduciary rule — takes the form of a “presidential memo” that will direct the Labor Department to cease implementation of the measure and “completely review” it.

The fiduciary rule would have required brokers to act in their clients' best interest when offering retirement investing advice.

Most insurers, brokerage firms and mutual funds had sought to stall — and ultimately kill — the rule ever since the Obama Labor Department proposed it in 2015.

But it has been strongly backed by Warren, who has said the rule is needed to end what she says are unsavory sales tactics.

The official said the administration considers the rule misguided and suggested it might have exceeded the Labor Department’s statutory authority.

“We think this was a complete miss on what they were trying to do,” he said.

Patrick Temple-West contributed to this report.