Jonathan Ernst/REUTERS
President Donald Trump made his feud with big banks official.
After making his grievances against banks clear earlier in the week, Trump signed an executive order for federal banking regulators to eliminate guidance that encourages what he calls “politicized” or “unlawful” debanking.
According to the executive order and a White House fact sheet, the order requires various federal regulators and agencies to “make reasonable efforts” to reinstate debanked customers. The Treasury Department is tasked with creating a strategy and new regulations to prevent “unlawful” debanking, while the Attorney General would oversee and investigate cases of people suspected of being debanked in discriminatory ways.
The Trump Organization and Eric Trump sued Capital One earlier this year for closing accounts in the wake of the January 6, 2021, riot. Capital One has denied wrongdoing, and litigation is ongoing.
Earlier this week, Trump told CNBC’s “Squawk Box” in an interview that Bank of America and JPMorgan Chase had previously refused to accept his deposits.
“They totally discriminate against, I think, me maybe even more, but they discriminate against many conservatives,” he told show host Andrew Ross Sorkin. “I think the word might be ‘Trump supporters’ more than conservatives.”
In a statement to Reuters, JPMorgan said it doesn’t close accounts for political reasons, while Bank of America did not address Trump’s claims.
In January at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Trump claimed Bank of America and other banks were refusing to accept conservative customers, which the Charlotte-based lender denied.
Prior to the inauguration, crypto-connected supporters of the president turned debanking into a political issue. Well-known venture capitalist Marc Andreessen said on Joe Rogan’s podcast that dozens of tech founders had been cut off from banking services during former President Joe Biden’s administration.
Banks are just the latest industry to draw the president’s ire, despite the fact that the securities and investment industry gave more to Trump than his opponent, former Vice President Kamala Harris, according to political donation tracker OpenSecrets. Trump’s cabinet also includes Howard Lutnick, a banker who ran Cantor Fitzgerald before becoming the Secretary of Commerce.
The executive order could result in fines for banks found to have discriminated against conservatives, mimicking the White House’s tactics for punishing other industries.
Trump started his year by pulling funding from elite higher education institutions that he accused of condoning discrimination on campus. He soon pivoted to an ongoing legal battle with the country’s biggest law firms, some of whom have represented clients in court cases against him.
Then, as his tariff policies intensified, Trump went after the likes of Amazon and Walmart for potentially being explicit about how these trade barriers would drive up prices for US consumers. More recently, Big Pharma executives woke up one morning to a letter from the president, threatening them to lower the prices of drugs.
Capitol One and the Bank of America did not immediately respond to requests for comments.
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