The Trump Administration’s Plan for Protecting Consumers? Politely Ask Companies to Behave.

Russell Vought, the acting director of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, testified before the Senate Committee on Banking, Housing and Urban Affairs in July. Samuel Corum/Sipa USA via AP Images In mid-July testimony before Congress, Russell Vought boasted that, as the acting head of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, he’d refashioned the agency’s approach to pursuing banks and other financial companies accused of exploiting Americans — the role Congress had created for the agency after the 2008 economic crash. Vought had spent the first 18 months of the new Trump administration trying to dismantle the bureau, much as he and other appointees had done with the U. S. Agency for International Development .