New York, Feb 2 US President Donald Trump has fired Rohit Chopra, who was appointed the head of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) by former President Joe Biden.
In a letter to Trump on Saturday, Chopra acknowledged that his term as the director of the CFPB “has concluded”. Media reports said that he was informed of his firing in an email.
Chopra, whose five-year term was to end next year, was caught in the Trump purge of Biden administration hold-overs. He was among the last of the Indian Americans appointed by Biden to senior, high-visibility positions left after Trump took over.
Chopra had served on the Federal Trade Commission as a nominee of the Democratic Party before Biden picked him to head the CFPB.
The bureau says its mission is to protect consumers from “unfair, deceptive, or abusive practices” and deal with consumer complaints.
In his last major action at CFPB, Chopra fined the international remittance company Wise about $2.5 million on Thursday for inaccurately advertising fees and not properly disclosing exchange rates.
Chopra was considered a protege of Senator Elizabeth Warren, a progressive who is the senior Democratic member of the Senate Banking Committee.
She praised Chopra’s work at the CFPB saying that under his leadership, “the CFPB is holding Wall Street accountable for cheating hard-working families and preventing the de-banking of Americans across the country, including consumers locked out of the financial system due to overdraft fees, religious organisations, and conservatives”.
“The agency has returned over $20 billion to consumers since its founding – protecting Americans from junk fees, medical debt, and predatory lending”, she said.
Chopra’s letter posted on X was without rancour and he mentioned his work on three policy issues Trump had supported in his campaign.He wrote that he has “analysed your promising proposal on capping credit card interest rates and we see a path for enacting meaningful reforms”.
Trump has said that he wants to cap credit card interest rates that can now exceed 20 per cent at around 10 per cent.
Chopra said that he has proposed rules to “block China, Russia, and other countries of concern from conducting surveillance operations on Americans using commercial data brokers”.
He said he has suggested policies to “block financial firms and technology giants from debanking and de-platforming Americans based on their speech or religious views”.
Trump was himself a victim of social media giants that blocked him from using their platforms.
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