Trump's Billionaire Appointee Targets Consumer Protections by Halting All CFPB Operations

U.S. President Donald Trump announced Monday that he has installed Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent, a billionaire hedge fund manager, to serve as acting director of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, an agency that has long been in the crosshairs of Elon Musk, Republican lawmakers, and corporate America.

The news comes days after Trump fired Rohit Chopra, the consumer champion who served as head of the CFPB under former President Joe Biden and secured more than $6 billion in consumer relief during his tenure.

Soon after taking charge of the CFPB, Bessent ordered the bureau to "stop all rulemaking, communications, litigation, and other activities," Bloomberg Law reported Monday, citing an email to agency staff.

"A source inside the bureau who asked to remain anonymous said the order appeared to shut down the CFPB altogether, for the time being," the outlet added.

Politico reported that Bessent also directed staff to "suspend the effective dates of rules that haven't gone into effect yet." Among the rules now in limbo is a measure that, if enacted, would save consumers billions of dollars per year in overdraft fees.

Tony Carrk, executive director of the progressive watchdog group Accountable.US, said in a statement Monday that "we can only hope that Bessent continues former Director Rohit Chopra's legacy standing up to price gouging and fraud, but I fear his appointment opens the floodgates for corporate abuse and financial scams."

"President Trump has held himself up as a champion for working Americans, but his plans for the CFPB are just another example of the administration's billionaires-first, consumers-last agenda," said Carrk. "While he parades a crowd of corporate lobbyists, billionaire donors, and Wall Street insiders like Scott Bessent to lead our country, we're looking at the end of basic protections for American consumers."

Trump's decision to place a Cabinet official in charge of the CFPB mirrors the approach he took during his first White House term, when he installed CFPB opponent Mick Mulvaney—who was then in charge of the Office of Management and Budget—at the helm of the consumer bureau.

"In both cases," The American Banker noted Monday, "Trump is picking a director who is expected to move quickly to freeze existing rules and enforcement actions, while also halting and starting to rescind all nonbinding interpretive rules, guidance, and proposals. One of Mulvaney's first moves was to strip the agency's fair-lending office of enforcement powers, demoting the fair-lending division, which had previously been equal alongside supervision and enforcement."

Bessent, whose elevation to acting head of the CFPB was applauded by bank lobbyists, is currently facing close scrutiny and backlash over his decision last week to give Musk agents access to the Treasury Department's payment system.

In a letter to Bessent on Sunday, Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.)—an architect of the CFPB—expressed alarm that "as one of your first acts as secretary, you appear to have handed over a highly sensitive system responsible for millions of Americans' private data—and a key function of government—to an unelected billionaire and an unknown number of his unqualified flunkies."

"The American people deserve answers about your role in this mismanagement, which threatens the privacy and economic security of every American," Warren added.