What will happen to consumers under Trump?
Talking Feds
Harry Litman
4.8 • 4.1K Ratings
🗓️ 20 February 2025
⏱️ 25 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Harry talks with Rich Cordray, the first director of the Consumer Protection Financial Bureau, about the Bureau’s achievements for American consumers and the concerns that its functions now may slow dramatically or even stop. Trump recently fired the Bureau’s director and appointed a new director who ordered a halt to all Bureau actions; a new acting Director later instructed all staff to cease work. Cordray sketches out the Bureau’s general achievements in the mortgage, credit card, and banking industries, in which individual consumers had so often been victimized with little recourse until the CFPB came online. Cordray explains the lawsuit now pending in the district court in Washington DC to prevent the Administration from mass firings and destruction of agency data. He ends by emphasizing the importance during this time of feverish activity within the Executive Branch to keep watch on enforcement of consumer laws and Administration action to weaken consumer protection.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Welcome to Talking Fed's one-on-one, deep dive discussions with national figures about the most |
| 0:13.4 | fascinating and consequential issues defining our culture and shaping our lives. I'm your host, Harry Littman. |
| 0:22.5 | Hello, everyone, and welcome to another talking feds one-on-one. In the flurry of activities |
| 0:29.4 | to redo or gut the executive branch, President Trump last week fired the head of the Consumer |
| 0:36.3 | Finance Protection Bureau, Roe-Chopra, and there fired the head of the Consumer Finance Protection Bureau, |
| 0:38.0 | Roe Chopra. |
| 0:39.8 | And there's been some talk of what would happen in the wake of that. |
| 0:44.4 | But the CFPB has been something of a conservative, on the conservative hit list for some time. |
| 0:53.3 | And I wanted both to talk about what we're losing by having it |
| 0:58.3 | being apparently disempowered and what it's done for the American people. So we have the perfect |
| 1:06.1 | person for that. Rich Cordray was the initial director. He's also a really very dear lifelong friend |
| 1:15.3 | from Quirking Days. So very pleased to welcome, Rich Cordray. Good to be. So, I mean, |
| 1:22.4 | let's start with a little bit, both in your tenure and that of Chopras. |
| 1:30.8 | And if there's anything to mention about the four years when Trump 1.0, |
| 1:37.1 | but tell us a little bit about what hole in government the CFPB was designed to fill |
| 1:43.7 | and how it has done that, what it sort of record |
| 1:48.6 | was up to the present. Sure. And the CFPB was enacted by Congress. It's a statute, it's a law |
| 1:58.1 | of the land, that there shall be a consumer financial protection |
| 2:02.1 | bureau. And there's about 150 pages of statute with all kinds of shells and requirements as to |
| 2:10.6 | what parts of the bureau should be and what functions they have. And much of that is mandatory. |
| 2:21.6 | So it's law of the land. Has been since 2010 when it was enacted. I became the first director. There was some back and forth with the Senate over confirming me, |
| 2:29.1 | but I became the director in 2012 and served until 2017. Under the first Trump administration, I held over for 11 |
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