Trump ally Elon Musk calls to ‘delete’ US consumer protection bureau

Musk, a confidante of the president-elect, is acceptable to co-lead Trump’s recently created Department of Government Efficiency.

Tech billionaire Elon Musk has expressed enactment for binning a national bureau successful the United States designed to support consumers from predatory fiscal practices.

In an early-morning connection connected his societal media level X, Musk called for an extremity to the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB), an autarkic watchdog bureau with oversight implicit banks and different fiscal institutions.

“Delete CFPB. There are excessively galore duplicative regulatory agencies,” Musk wrote connected Wednesday.

Musk is set to advise the medication of President-elect Donald Trump successful the caller year, successful a recently created relation to slash authorities bureaucracy.

Trump announced his plans for the Department of Government Efficiency, oregon DOGE, connected November 13, with Musk and chap entrepreneur Vivek Ramaswamy astatine its head.

On societal media, the president-elect described the section arsenic a committee that would “provide proposal and guidance from extracurricular of Government” to “restructure Federal Agencies”.

Musk, an entrepreneur known for the rocket institution SpaceX and the electrical car concern Tesla, has already started to sanction national agencies helium feels should travel connected the chopping block.

Also connected Wednesday, helium posted a canvass connected X asking viewers to measurement successful connected what should hap to the fund for the Internal Revenue Service (IRS), the bureau liable for collecting national taxes.

The astir fashionable effect was to person its fund “deleted”.

Musk aboriginal responded affirmatively to a commenter who called for the Department of Government Efficiency to audit the IRS: “Gonna happen.”

Musk’s comment astir the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, however, is 1 of the astir nonstop signals yet that the bureau could travel nether onslaught during Trump’s 2nd term.

Founded successful July 2011, the bureau was a absorption to the 2007 fiscal crisis, which was sparked by predatory lending successful the US lodging market. The effect was a “great recession” that saw economical losses crossed the world.

To forestall a akin situation from happening again, Congress passed the Dodd-Frank Act to overhaul the fiscal regulatory system. New agencies were tasked with monitoring and maintaining the wellness of the US fiscal system.

The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, successful particular, was established to stitchery user complaints, analyse them and suss retired “unfair, deceptive oregon abusive” practices.

As of May, the bureau reports that its enactment has resulted successful implicit $20.7bn successful compensation, cancelled indebtedness and different forms of monetary alleviation for the US public.

It besides states it has requested responses from companies for much than 5.6 cardinal user complaints.

Still, the bureau has repeatedly travel nether onslaught from Republicans, who impeach it of overstepping successful its mission.

For example, Project 2025 – a argumentation papers from the Heritage Foundation deliberation tank, designed arsenic a blueprint for a right-wing presidency – called for the bureau to beryllium abolished outright.

“The CFPB is simply a highly politicized, damaging, and utterly unaccountable national agency. It is unconstitutional,” the papers says. “The adjacent blimpish President should bid the contiguous dissolution of the agency.”

Musk’s comments connected Wednesday astir the CFPB came successful effect to complaints from Marc Andreessen, a Silicon Valley businessman who claimed the bureau had “terrorised” fiscal institutions for governmental reasons.

Andreessen was a large donor to the Trump reelection campaign.