Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent used a G20 finance ministers gathering in Asheville, North Carolina on Monday to argue that post-crisis regulation has gutted the community banking sector and that lighter rules are the remedy. What complicates the case: the revival he cited as proof, a surge in new bank charter applications, has been driven largely by fintech and digital asset companies, not the Main Street lenders at the center of his argument.
Speaking to a room that included JPMorgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon and Goldman Sachs chief David Solomon, Bessent said post-financial crisis rules have contributed to the disappearance of half of the country's small and community banks. The argument carries a pointed edge. The 2023 failures of Silicon Valley Bank and other regional lenders arrived despite, Bessent said, all that regulatory supervision. "Dodd-Frank was supposed to end 'too big to fail,'" his prepared remarks read. "Instead, it created 'too small to succeed.'"
The administration has already acted on that logic. A recent easing of capital requirements lets qualifying community banks hold less capital, a change Bessent said could "unleash tens of billions for reinvestment into small businesses and loans for families across this country." A broader overhaul of bank capital rules is also in motion; regulators say it would modestly reduce requirements for large banks and more significantly lower them for smaller institutions.
The counterargument sits in the data Bessent chose to illustrate the policy's momentum. He said more applicants sought new bank charters in the first year of Trump's second term than during the entire prior administration. But much of that activity has come from fintech and digital asset companies, including Coinbase and Ripple, seeking to operate more like traditional banks without depending on partner-bank arrangements. That is a different kind of confidence than the small-business lender revival his framing implies.
The Trump administration also used the Asheville session to formalize a shift in how economic policy gets made at the G20. A new structure under the U.S. presidency invited executives into discussions traditionally reserved for finance ministers, among them Truist's incoming CEO Michael Lyons, Citibank's global head of digital assets Ryan Rugg, and Circle president Heath Tarbert. Bessent described the intent as soliciting business input while decisions are being shaped, not after companies have already absorbed their effects.
On balance, the deregulatory direction is clear. The case for community bank relief draws on real evidence: half the sector gone, and the 2023 failures arriving despite the rules meant to prevent them. The risk is that the headline metric Bessent reached for, new charter growth, is measuring something different than the Main Street revival his argument promises.