Trump signs bill killing SEC rule on foreign payments

President Donald Trump Tuesday signed the first in a series of congressional regulatory rollback bills, revoking an Obama-era regulation that required oil and mining companies to disclose their payments to foreign governments.

That regulation, part of the Dodd-Frank Wall Street reforms, was strongly opposed by the oil and gas industry — including Trump's Secretary of State, Rex Tillerson, who as head of Exxon Mobil personally lobbied to kill the Securities and Exchange Commission's rule that he said would make it difficult to do business in Russia.


"It's a big deal," Trump said at the signing. "The energy jobs are coming back. Lots of people going back to work now."

Today's signing in the Oval Office marked the first time in 16 years that the Congressional Review Act has been successfully used to roll back a regulation, and Congress is queuing up several others to send to the president's desk.

The American Petroleum Institute had challenged the SEC’s first version of that rule, known as the 1504 rule after the relevant section of the 2010 Dodd-Frank Wall Street reform bill, forcing the agency back to the drawing board in 2013. In 2015, a federal judge said the SEC was dragging its feet on issuing a new version, and the SEC was ordered to finish the new rule by late June 2016 — putting it just within reach of the CRA’s timeframe.

Congress has already passed another resolution gutting the Interior Department’s stream protection rule that has been criticized by the coal industry. Trump was reportedly scheduled to sign that one at an event in Ohio on Thursday, but that trip has been scrubbed, and it remains unclear when he will sign the measure.

The Senate is also teeing up votes this week for several others that have already been passed by the House.