It will be hard to repeal the fiduciary rule through executive action, because Department of Labor officials took the time to carefully construct this requirement, vetting thousands of comments over years. We should hope Mr. Trump fails here, because it is an important rule. The Council of Economic Advisers estimated that it would benefit consumers to the tune of $17 billion a year.

It’s mildly surprising because the fiduciary rule is an elegant way to deal with a serious problem for everyday Americans using an approach conservatives should appreciate. The government sets an ethical norm — similar to the fiduciary rule, simply a code of conduct for investment professionals — one that has existed from the Code of Hammurabi through the Judeo-Christian tradition and, a bonus for the right, centuries of common law, for private conduct. People are then empowered to manage their investments against the backdrop of a norm guiding this relationship.

Third, rather than meet with regulators, small businesses or community banks, Mr. Trump met with the titans of Wall Street before announcing the directives.

For all the talk of the “forgotten man,” conservatives and Mr. Trump will approach attacking Dodd-Frank as a straightforward list of priorities from the most powerful heights of the financial industry. That the fiduciary rule, rather than any of the other things Dodd-Frank does, is President Trump’s first target demonstrates that the administration is giving priority to the donor class, which has obsessed about the rule for years.

You can see this in the way administration officials are talking about their approach. President Trump’s National Economic Council director, Gary D. Cohn, has said that banks have too high capital requirements and are being forced to do too much to prepare for failure, and has hinted that future executive orders would target these reforms. He justifies this argument by describing his recent experiences as president of Goldman Sachs. It’s no wonder financial stocks have been soaring since Mr. Trump was elected. Voters who hoped he would “drain the swamp” and upset the elite are in for a big surprise.

There will also be a lot of discussion by the Trump administration about Dodd-Frank failing to end “too big to fail” and about credit drying up for businesses. This is impossible to find in the data. Surveys of small businesses and loan officers don’t find that Dodd-Frank has killed access to credit, and we don’t see it in the aggregate lending data either.

With the help of Dodd-Frank, there’s been significant progress made toward ensuring that a systemically risky financial institution can be wound down. Mr. Trump could have taken actions to push reform further.

It’s clear with his orders that he won’t take that choice.