Musk calls for abolishing consumer finance agency: ‘Delete CFPB’

Billionaire Elon Musk called for eliminating the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, highlighting the renewed threat under President-elect Donald Trump to a regulatory agency that has long been a target of Republicans and business advocacy groups.

“Delete CFPB. There are too many duplicative regulatory agencies,” Musk wrote in a post on his social-media platform X early Wednesday.

Musk’s criticism is notable because he, alongside technology entrepreneur and fellow businessman Vivek Ramaswamy, has been been tapped by Trump to run a new effort, dubbed the Department of Government Efficiency, that aims to slash the federal bureaucracy and reduce government spending.

And Musk’s move signals a new stage in a long-running Washington fight over the agency’s powers and very existence.

The CFPB — the brainchild of progressive Massachusetts Senator Elizabeth Warren — was created as part of the 2010 Dodd-Frank Act in the wake of the financial crisis and given the job of overseeing parts of the financial industry that interact with consumers. The agency, though, has endured a rocky political tenure, facing multiple legal challenges since its onset.

During his first term, Trump took steps to largely neutralize the agency, easing the CFPB’s enforcement of banks. But under President Joe Biden and Director Rohit Chopra the agency has taken an aggressive regulatory approach to consumer finance, cracking down on home foreclosures and bank overdraft fees. Earlier this year, the agency also scored a win in the courts when the US Supreme Court upheld its funding system.

Project 2025, a controversial blueprint for a second Trump term crafted by the conservative Heritage Foundation, calls for abolishing the agency, calling it “highly politicized, damaging, and utterly unaccountable,” and “returning the consumer protection function of the CFPB to banking regulators and the Federal Trade Commission.”

Chopra’s own future as head of the CFPB is in jeopardy. Since a 2020 Supreme Court ruling making the role at-will, the incoming president will have the power to fire Chopra if he doesn’t resign first. Removing him would be a victory for businesses that have sought to weaken independent federal regulators.

Musk has already demonstrated his influence over the incoming administration, including sitting in on transition meetings and calls with foreign leaders. But it is unclear how much power his Department of Government Efficiency will wield in its efforts to scale back the federal government. Trump has said it will “provide advice and guidance from outside of Government, and will partner with the White House and Office of Management & Budget to drive large scale structural reform.”

— By Hadriana Lowenkron (Bloomberg)