A busy Fed is tied up with other priorities, including easing constraints on community and regional lenders as required by an overhaul of the 2010 Dodd-Frank Act that Congress passed last year. If Wall Street-friendly rule changes get postponed long enough, they could get derailed should a Democrat take the White House in 2020. And if Democratic lawmakers also win majorities in the House and Senate, they would be empowered to overturn any regulations approved in the last months of Trump’s term.

No Pitchforks
Volcker, the rule named for former Fed chairman Paul Volcker, is one of the most contentious measures in Dodd-Frank. Advocates say it stopped deposit-taking banks from acting like hedge funds, dangerous behavior that contributed to the 2008 meltdown. But Wall Street argues Volcker is unnecessarily complex, prompting lenders to reject all sorts of client trades that the regulation was never meant to capture.

V. Gerard Comizio, a banking lawyer at Fried Frank in Washington, said it shouldn’t come as a surprise that regulators are having issues revamping a rule as dense as Volcker. He argued that last year’s proposal was so complicated -- with the agencies posing more than 300 questions for commentators to weigh in on -- that some saw it as more testing the waters than a legitimate effort.

“There aren’t pitchforks and torches marching toward the Fed from the industry,” Comizio said.

Bankers Complaining
Senator Sherrod Brown, the top Democrat on the Senate Banking Committee, has a different take. He said if regulators re-propose Volcker, it will be another example of their willingness to do Wall Street’s bidding in the Trump era.

“It’s no surprise that when Wall Street banks complained that the proposed rewrite of the Volcker Rule wasn’t weak enough, Trump regulators went to work watering it down further,” the Ohio lawmaker said in a Thursday statement.

On the leverage ratio, McWilliams told reporters in February she favors the FDIC, Fed and OCC moving in tandem, predicting the rule may need a redo to get there. Neither the Fed nor the OCC have taken a position on her remarks. OCC spokesman Bryan Hubbard said it’s up to the FDIC to address what it believes should be the next step.

To be sure, the financial industry has notched several wins under Trump and the regulatory tone has shifted to a lighter touch after years of aggressive oversight.

Softening Rules
Compliance burdens that have been softened include the Fed’s annual stress tests that evaluate whether banks can keep lending during a crisis and so-called living wills meant to prepare lenders for hypothetical bankruptcies.

And on Volcker, Comizio said “the industry will take what it can get.”