Donald Trump built his presidential campaign around two ideas: 1) a corrupt financial establishment had swindled the middle class, and 2) immigrants and foreigners are dangerous.

Some combination of these two sentiments has fueled every American populist movement dating back to President Andrew Jackson. Populists can take credit for plenty of economic progress: child labor laws, universal public education, the eight-hour workday, the abandonment of the gold standard and all modern antitrust and bank regulations. The dark side of populism can be blamed for the Trail of Tears, the Chinese Exclusion Act and the incarceration of Japanese-Americans during World War II.

After a month in office, its pretty clear which strain of populism Trump takes seriously. Hes ordered the construction of a border wall with Mexico and plans to hire 5,000 new border patrol agents and 10,000 Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers. Hes also attempted to ban Syrian refugees and travelers from seven Muslim-majority nations from the country.

In the meantime, Trump has embraced American financial titans as some of his closest allies. Wall Street is making its peace with people like Trump chief strategist Steve Bannon , the former Breitbart News executive chairman, and Attorney General Jeff Sessions , whos been repeatedly accused of racism, as the crackdown on immigrants intensifies.

Government Sachs

Trumps affinity for Wall Street is most obvious in his choice of personnel. His top economic adviser, Gary Cohn, his treasury secretary, Steven Mnuchin, and Bannon are all Goldman Sachs alums. Trumps nominee to run the Securities and Exchange Commission is Jay Clayton, a Wall Street lawyer who has represented Goldman Sachs as a partner at Sullivan & Cromwell, a law firm so close to Goldman it is sometimes jokingly referred to as the legal wing of the bank.

Trumps pick for commerce secretary is private equity billionaire Wilbur Ross, whose wheeling and dealing included stewardship over American Home Mortgage Servicing and Option One, mortgage companies that paid millions to settle charges of relying on forged signatures and fabricated documents to push through foreclosures. Mnuchins bank, OneWest often referred to as a foreclosure machine also pursued improper evictions by robo-signing key documents, a fact Mnuchin lied about in his confirmation hearing .

Reviewing Dodd-Frank

Within two weeks of taking office, Trump was already delivering policy favors to Wall Street. He feted banking kingpins like JPMorgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon at the White House before signing a flashy executive order calling for a review of the 2010 Dodd-Frank financial reform law.

The signing ceremony was essentially symbolic regulatory agencies dont need an executive order to rewrite the regulations required by the law. In fact, they dont really need to rewrite the rules they can simply refuse to enforce them.

Trump Transportation Secretary Elaine Chao was a master of this approach when she served as Labor Secretary for President George W. Bush. As The Huffington Posts Dave Jamieson has reported , a Government Accountability Office investigation found that Chaos agency simply didnt investigate serious complaints about labor violations. The GAO determined this by registering several fake and outrageous complaints, and monitoring the departments response. In the most outlandish case, Chaos agency didnt follow up on a report that children were operating meat grinders and circular saws at a meat-packing plant during school hours.

All Trumps appointees have to do to gut Dodd-Frank is follow Chaos example. But the symbolism of the signing ceremony matters. Trump was sending the strongest signal possible to Wall Street that he will not interfere with their quest for profit, however reckless or ill-gotten it may be.