Council of Economic Advisers estimates Consumer Financial Protection Bureau rules have cost consumers up to USD 369 billion since 2011

The Council of Economic Advisers published an estimate that the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau’s regulatory, supervisory, and enforcement approach has increased the price of consumer financial products and reduced credit availability. The analysis estimates cumulative consumer costs of USD 237–369 billion in 2025 USD from 2011 through 2024, comprising higher borrowing costs, reduced loan originations, and fiscal costs, and puts the 2024 annual cost of mortgages, auto loans, and credit cards at USD 24.4–38.1 billion. The estimate attributes at least USD 222–350 billion of the total to higher borrowing costs, using a mortgage-market regression discontinuity around the 43 percent debt-to-income threshold in the 2013 Ability-to-Repay and Qualified Mortgage framework to infer a 16 basis point, or 4.3 percent, interest-rate “wedge” for loans just above the cutoff. That wedge is then extrapolated to auto loans and credit cards using relative complaint intensity from the CFPB’s consumer complaint database, producing cumulative added interest-cost estimates of USD 116–183 billion for mortgages, USD 32–51 billion for auto loans, and USD 74–116 billion for credit cards, alongside an estimated deadweight loss of USD 1.5–5.7 billion from fewer originations. The paper also quantifies administrative and fiscal channels, including an annual CFPB paperwork burden exceeding 29 million hours in 2024 and cumulative business paperwork costs of USD 21 billion from 2011–2024.