FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE: May 9, 2025

Contacts: Carter Dougherty, carter@ourfinancialsecurity.org 

Trump CFPB Plans Slash-and-Burn of Important Consumer Protections
Plans to withdraw 67 measures would undermine critical consumer protections in key areas, from credit reporting, to debt collection, to predatory lending practices, and more

Earlier today, Russell Vought, Trump’s acting director, announced plans to begin the withdrawal of 67 measures undertaken by the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau from the past fifteen years, across areas including credit reports, consumer complaints, credit cards, and servicemember rights. 

“Coupled with the CFPB’s moves to abandon enforcement actions, this pullback highlights the Trump administration’s intention to eradicate any and all pro-consumer oversight and regulation for predatory lenders, Wall Street banks, and Big Tech,” said Christine Chen Zinner, senior policy counsel at Americans for Financial Reform. “This administration has given a green light for financial predators to rip off everyday people, military families, and older adults – or anyone else, for that matter.” 

Today’s announcement rescinds all guidance, interpretive rules, policy statements, and advisory opinions that the CFPB has issued since 2011 — the year it assumed its full statutory duties. In particular, the plans take aim at the CFPB’s complaint system, a highly successful effort to help consumers address complaints with financial firms and make the marketplace more transparent and responsive. This move appears intended to conceal decades of currently available public information about what companies were the subject of complaints and the precise nature of the consumers’ problems.

“The public nature of the consumer complaint system was the key to its success,” Chen Zinner said. “Knowing that the CFPB was shining a light on how companies treated consumers facilitated quicker resolution of consumer complaints that reduced run-arounds that people often face when trying to resolve legitimate complaints about unfair fees, fraudulent transactions, deceptive practices, and more.”

Other measures being rescinded include guidance that would:

• Make sure credit reports are accurate, and require the speedy correction of mistakes
• Rein in abusive and illegal debt collection practices
• Empower states to enact stronger consumer protection laws on credit reporting and  to enforce the Consumer Financial Protection Act
• Reiterate the CFPB’s duty to assess financial risks to our active-duty servicemembers
• Curb credit card add-ons and abusive terms and conditions that rip people off
• Protect people’s right to complain about bad financial products and practices

Today’s announcement coincided with Trump’s nomination of CFPB director nominee Jonathan McKernan to also serve as head of domestic finance at the Treasury Department. 

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