Donald Trump's executive order directing the reclassification of marijuana under federal law has not persuaded Wall Street to open its doors to the cannabis industry - and, according to at least one prominent investor, that intransigence is starting to irritate the president himself. The $32 billion legal cannabis sector remains effectively locked out of mainstream banking, a structural problem that a presidential directive alone cannot fix.
Why the Executive Order Changes Very Little, for Now
Trump signed his order on December 18, instructing Attorney General Pam Bondi to finalize a rescheduling process that the Biden administration had initiated back in 2022. The target is Schedule 3 - a federal designation for substances with accepted medical value, which would place cannabis alongside drugs like anabolic steroids and certain prescription stimulants. That reclassification would carry real financial consequences: it would lift the Section 280E tax burden, an Internal Revenue Code provision that currently prohibits cannabis businesses from deducting ordinary operating expenses because they traffic in a Schedule 1 controlled substance.
Here's the catch: none of that has actually happened yet. The rescheduling remains pending. No formal rule has been finalized. Until it is, the legal exposure that makes banks nervous - potential violations of federal money-laundering statutes - has not materially changed. A JP Morgan Chase executive, in an internal memo reported by the New York Post, put the institution's position plainly: without formal reclassification as a Schedule 3 drug, the bank will not change its stance.
Banks have also seized on an ambiguity in the order itself, arguing that Trump's directive focused on medical cannabis rather than adult-use, recreational marijuana - the larger and faster-growing segment of the market. Whether that reading holds up legally is debatable. In practice, though, it gives compliance departments exactly the kind of interpretive wiggle room they need to justify inaction.
An Industry Stuck Between Federal Law and State Commerce
The banking exclusion is not a new wound. For years, cannabis operators in states with legal markets have been forced to run largely cash-based businesses - paying employees in envelopes, transporting tax payments in duffel bags, storing revenue in safes rather than accounts. The operational risks are considerable, and the indignity is self-evident: a state-licensed, tax-paying business treated as unbankable because of a federal classification that most Americans no longer support.
No bank or credit union has actually been prosecuted for serving cannabis clients. That matters. The threat is theoretical, not historical. But financial institutions operate on legal certainty, not probability - and without explicit statutory protection, their counsel consistently advises caution. The result is that a $32 billion industry functions, financially, like it exists in the shadows.
Investor Marc Cohodes, a former hedge fund manager, told the Post that Trump is genuinely frustrated by the situation. His framing is worth noting for what it reveals about the political logic: U.S. cannabis companies, employing American workers and paying American taxes, cannot list on major U.S. exchanges - while Canadian cannabis companies can. That asymmetry, in Trump's frame, is a bad deal for American business. It's an argument that bypasses the public health debate entirely and lands squarely on economic nationalism.
Congress Holds the Actual Lever - and Hasn't Pulled It
The legislation that could actually resolve this is the SAFER Banking Act, which would explicitly protect financial institutions that choose to serve state-legal cannabis operators from federal prosecution or regulatory penalty. It is not a radical bill; it is, in many respects, table stakes for an industry that already exists and pays taxes. The House has passed versions of marijuana banking legislation multiple times under Democratic leadership. The Senate has not. Under Republican control of Congress, the bill has gone precisely nowhere.
There's a structural tension here that Trump's executive action cannot resolve on its own. Many Republican lawmakers remain opposed to anything that looks like federal endorsement of marijuana normalization, even in the narrow, procedural form of banking access. Rescheduling - let alone re-banking - touches a fault line within the party between libertarian-leaning members who see this as a states' rights issue and social conservatives who don't want any part of it.
Trump's order may have signaled direction. It did not create law. And until Congress acts - or until the DEA formally completes the rescheduling process and banks receive explicit legal cover - the industry's checking accounts will remain where they have been for years: essentially nowhere.
