The unwinding of Dodd-Frank. The firing up of shuttered coal plants. The rollback of rules that increase overtime pay for low-wage workers. Hours after Donald J Trump won the race for the White House, scores of regulations that have reshaped corporate America in the last eight years suddenly seemed vulnerable. While many questions remain about how 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: Trump is likely to seek vast cuts in regulations across the banking, health care and energy industries. Here is a look at some regulations Trump is likely to bring:
Finance
Trump’s victory is not a clear boon for bankers and financiers in the way that past Republican wins have been. Many of his campaign proposals appear to favour banks and investors, including a promise to undo Dodd-Frank, which was passed after the 2008 financial crisis. One likely possibility is that the Trump administration would take aim at a handful of specific rules that most irritate the banks. Trump could prune other low-hanging financial regulations.
Tech
The idea of a Trump presidency triggered a sense of dread among many people in the liberal-leaning technology business. Trump is seen as less favourably disposed toward the concentration of power among the handful of large companies that dominate the internet, including Facebook, Google and Amazon, said Glenn Kelman, chief executive of Redfin, an online real estate firm Analysts expect that he will appoint antitrust regulators at the Federal Trade Commission.
Pharmaceuticals
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Several in the industry said that the broader debate over high drug prices would probably continue and that it was unclear what positions Trump might take. Outrage over the rising cost of prescription drugs has spiked in recent years as Americans struggle to pay for their medicines. Trump placed less emphasis on the issue than Clinton did during the campaign. He has said he would be in favour of allowing the federal government to negotiate for the price of prescription drugs.
Energy
In the energy industry, one of Trump’s first targets, according to Moore, an economic adviser, is Obama’s effort to limit carbon emissions at coal-fired utilities. Trump’s supporters say the rule drove coal companies into bankruptcy, even though the industry says that its problems are mostly caused by waning demand. He has vowed to cancel Paris Agreement. It is unclear whether the election of Trump can help struggling coal miners get back their jobs, but it will almost certainly upend the world’s efforts to curb the impact of global warming. Trump has said that he would do everything in his power to undo Obama’s ambitious domestic and international climate change policies. He has vowed to “cancel” the Paris Agreement. He could also direct the EPA to rewrite the regulations to be far more lax.
Labour
Obama enacted a number of other policies through executive order rather than a more involved rule-making process, and these could be undone by a President Trump almost immediately, with the stroke of a pen. These include rules that increased the minimum wage and granted paid sick days to workers hired by federal contractors. One achievement in this area has been a regulation raising the salary threshold below which workers automatically become eligible for time-and-a-half overtime pay, to $47,476 from $23,660. In theory, the regulation could be undone by the Trump administration through a rule-making process similar to the one that produced it.