The current administration has intensified its assault on the US Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, claiming the agency it is trying to dismantle has cost Americans hundreds of billions of dollars in extra borrowing costs. A report prepared by the White House’s Council of Economic Advisers found the regulatory burden imposed by the agency has led to higher prices and reduced product offerings. It estimated this has cost consumers between $237 billion and $369 billion.
The acting director of the Office of Management and Budget stated, “The CFPB has been conscripted to advance a radical agenda that achieves precisely the opposite outcomes of what its leftist champions claim. It has prevented Americans from accessing credit and made life dramatically more unaffordable.” He has said he wants to “close down” the agency, which was set up to protect consumers in the aftermath of the 2008 financial crisis.
The report’s findings are similar to previously disputed calculations by the agency’s supporters. This comes after the administration spent months trying to neuter the CFPB, only to be thwarted by court rulings that ordered the government to keep running the agency—which enjoys broad public support—while litigation proceeds.
It also follows a report this month from the Senate banking committee, which claimed the White House’s attempts to gut the agency had cost American consumers up to $19 billion by allowing them to get “scammed by big banks and giant corporations.” The architect of the CFPB responded to the White House report, saying, “Trump can try to claim that stopping banks from cheating you out of your own money is actually somehow bad for you, but anyone who knows the facts knows the CFPB has returned tens of billions directly to Americans who were scammed.”
The agency’s own statistics show it has returned almost $20 billion to consumers since its formation in 2011 and secured $5 billion in fines. Data compiled by the CFPB also shows it has received at least half a million complaints from consumers about financial companies in the past year.
A former CFPB official now with a consumer advocacy group criticized the White House’s report, stating, “Putting the presidential seal on tired bank lobby talking points does nothing to rein in banks’ greed or lower costs for working families.”
Critics of the CFPB, including Republicans in Congress and conservative think-tanks, have long argued the agency imposed burdensome regulations on financial groups and consequently helped restrict credit availability. The White House report attempts to add ballast to these claims by comparing the cost of credit for mortgages subject to CFPB regulations to those that are not.
The report claimed that across three forms of consumer credit—mortgages, car loans, and credit cards—the CFPB had “increased consumer borrowing costs by between $222 billion to $350 billion from 2011 through 2024.” Meanwhile, the agency’s work has been brought to a near-standstill by the administration, which has placed staff on leave and dismissed dozens of enforcement actions.
