FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE: Feb. 1, 2025
CONTACT
Carter Dougherty
carter@ourfinancialsecurity.org
Trump’s Chopra Firing Undermines CFPB’s Consumer Protection Mission
Sacking defender of working families demonstrates protection of the powerful, not the people
Washington DC – President Donald Trump today caved in to pressure from Wall Street and Big Tech and fired Rohit Chopra, the director of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. During the campaign, Trump dangled measures like caps on credit card interest rates but is now sacking someone whose years of work on behalf of consumers benefited families across the country.
“With Chopra’s firing, the Big Banks and Big Tech are winning already, but the rest of us will lose as Trump does favors for industries with the most money,” said Christine Chen Zinner, senior policy counsel at the Americans for Financial Reform. “Chopra has tirelessly stood up against gouging, fraud, and abuse in the financial services industry that make it harder for ordinary people to make ends meet. This firing is a craven giveaway to companies that want to boost profits by ripping off working families.”
The firing comes on the heels of pressure from Wall Street – whose largest banks made $142 billion in profit last year – and Big Tech billionaires aimed at replacing Chopra, or even abolishing the agency altogether. The Consumer Bankers Association, which represents the largest U.S. banks, has sought Chopra’s ouster from the moment Trump took office. Many of its members, including Capital One, Bank of America, JPMorgan Chase, and Wells Fargo, face lawsuits from CFPB for defrauding customers. The damages reach nearly $3 billion.
President Trump has declared that government agencies should take ”emergency measures to reduce the cost of living.” In fact, the CFPB under Chopra led the fight against junk fees, the often-small charges that add up to a big chunk of family budgets, and it brought many enforcement actions against banks, tech companies, and lenders who ripped off consumers. New measures, such as new rules on open banking, will spur competition in financial services, while other steps aim to protect consumers from Big Tech abuses.
Just last year, Chopra’s CFPB unveiled new prohibitions against unfair junk fees that would put billions of dollars into the pockets of families. Lowering overdraft fees from $35 down to $5 would save households $5 billion annually and slashing credit card late fees from as high as $41 to $8 would save people $10 billion each year. Both now face litigation from bank lobbyists.
Since its creation, the CFPB has obtained over $21 billion in relief for over 200 million people in restitution and cancelled debts. Under Chopra’s tenure alone, corporate scofflaws returned over $6 billion to wronged consumers and paid $3.2 billion in civil penalties.
“Rohit Chopra deserves the thanks of millions of consumers for standing up to Wall Street and Big Tech, and bringing vigorous leadership to an agency that enjoys overwhelming support from voters across the political spectrum,” Chen Zinner said. “Chopra ran into a buzzsaw of opposition from the industry and its allies in Congress precisely because he did his job well.”
This choice comes on the heels of the congressional Republican leadership’s stated intentions to dismantle the CFPB and eliminate CFPB protections against medical debt on credit reports and abusive overdraft fees.
“A director that tries to undermine the CFPB’s consumer protection mission and tear it down from the inside is no friend to the millions of people who have benefited from this agency’s work,” said Amanda Jackson, consumer campaigns director at the Americans for Financial Reform. “Members of Congress are risking their political careers if they vote against rules that lower junk fees or take medical debt off credit reports.”
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