In his more than one hour nationwide address last night to a joint session of Congress, President Trump discussed a broad range of topics:  repeal of Obamacare, tax relief, immigration, rebuilding the Country’s infrastructure, strengthening the military, foreign trade.  All of these topics, and others mentioned by him, were important campaign issues for Trump.  Noticeably absent from his speech was any mention of Dodd-Frank (let alone any suggestion of a repeal) or the CFPB (let alone any suggestion that he intended to remove Director Cordray).  Indeed, he barely referenced the need for regulatory relief:

“We have undertaken a historic effort to eliminate job-crushing regulations, creating a deregulation task force inside of every government agency; imposing a new rule which mandates that for every one new regulation, two old regulations must be eliminated.”

While Trump implied that these deregulation initiatives apply to all Federal agencies, they likely apply only to executive agencies and not to independent agencies like the CFPB.

While it is hazardous to read too much into topics that he omitted from his speech, it is tempting to observe that the discharge and replacement of Richard Cordray as Director of the CFPB and the legislative initiatives to repeal or amend Dodd-Frank are not near the top of the President’s agenda.