In a speech before the US Chamber of Commerce’s 11th Annual Capital Market Summit, the CFTC’s acting Chairman J. Christopher Giancarlo announced a new project to simplify the agency’s regulations. Remarking that, "America’s derivatives markets are struggling, in some cases, under the weight of flawed and excessive regulation,” Chairman Giancarlo introduced the CFTC’s new focus on reinterpreting its regulatory mission consistent with the goals of the Trump Administration’s Executive Order on regulation. To achieve these goals, the CFTC will be seeking input from industry on where existing CFTC regulations can be simplified and made less costly.

On April 19, Rep. Jeb Hensarling (R-TX) published a discussion draft of his Financial CHOICE Act (Version 2), updated from his original 2016 draft (Version 1). While keeping what the Rep. Hensarling calls its “pro-growth, pro-consumer” features that would end “too-big-to-fail” bailouts, the 2017 discussion draft of the Financial CHOICE Act walks back or modifies some key provisions from the 2016 version. Version 2 retains the "Dodd-Frank offramp,” the optional exemption from many Dodd-Frank regulations in exchange for higher capital reserves, that was the centerpiece of Version 1. This new version, however, provides more incentives to banks to take the offramp, in the form of exemption from stress testing. As with Version 1, Version 2 also repeals the Volcker Rule and eliminates enhanced supervision of financial market utilities designated as systemically important by the Financial Stability Oversight Council. The bill also adds new provisions drastically limiting the powers of the CFPB, and modifies various regulatory abilities of the SEC, PCAOB, and the CFTC.