Trump fires Biden’s consumer protection watchdog Rohit Chopra

Rohit Chopra, the director of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau under President Joe Biden, was fired by the Trump administration, a person with knowledge of the matter said.

“This letter confirms that my term as CFPB director has concluded,” he wrote Saturday in a letter to President Donald Trump posted on X.

Chopra was confirmed by the Senate as the top consumer-protection regulator in the US in September 2021. His exit was expected due to his aggressive regulatory approach and a 2020 Supreme Court decision that made it easy for presidents to fire the agency’s director.

Under Chopra, the CFPB announced billions of dollars in fines and consumer compensation collectively against lenders such as Wells Fargo & Co., Goldman Sachs Group Inc. and Citigroup Inc.

Since its creation after the 2008 financial crisis, the agency’s rules and very existence have been challenged repeatedly in the courts. Chopra’s replacement under Trump may ease up on enforcement, draft weaker regulations and dial back Biden-era rules, though it’s unclear how far the new administration would go to unwind regulations popular with American consumers.

Massachusetts Democratic Senator Elizabeth Warren, who helped establish the agency, said in a statement on Saturday that Trump needs “a strong CFPB and a strong CFPB Director” to implement policy goals he campaigned on, like capping credit-card interest rates.

“But if President Trump and Republicans decide to cower to Wall Street billionaires and destroy the agency, they will have a fight on their hands,” Warren said.

The financial industry has sued over several recent CFPB initiatives, including buy-now, pay-later regulation and a rule that would cap credit-card late fees at $8. The “open banking” rule, which would require financial firms to provide free access to customer data, also faces a legal challenge from bank lobbying groups.

Chopra’s departure also will affect the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp.’s board of directors, which is all but certain to flip to Republican control. As a board member, Chopra raised concerns about a plan to dial back US regulators’ landmark bank-capital proposal, Bloomberg reported in September.

The FDIC’s board must include the heads of the CFPB and the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency. No more than three of the five members can be from the same political party.

— By Paige Smith and Katanga Johnson (Bloomberg)