President Trump is itching for a fight with Democrats over reining in the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, one of the most contentious reforms in response to the 2008 financial meltdown.

Just two weeks into his presidency, Mr. Trump took aim at the bureau with an executive order to begin unraveling the rules and regulations in the Dodd-Frank Act that created the watchdog agency in 2011.

The order didn’t mention the CFPB or its director, Richard Cordray, but the directive for the Treasury to review and assess changes to financial regulations and regulatory agencies had the inference to the bureau written all over it.

The battle over the agency’s fate is bound to get nasty.

“We expect to be cutting a lot out of Dodd-Frank,” Mr. Trump said at a White House meeting last week with business titans, including JPMorgan Chase & Co. CEO Jamie Dimon.

The brainchild of liberal crusader Sen. Elizabeth Warren, the CFPB is heralded on the left as the valiant watchdog over consumers’ most fraught financial dealings, including with credit cards, home mortgages and college loans.

Conservatives view the agency as the worst case of bureaucratic power run amok, saying its authority to investigate and punish financial institutions within its sweeping purview goes virtually unchecked.

Republican lawmakers also note that Congress doesn’t set the budget for the agency, which is funded through transfers from the Federal Reserve.

The CFPB budget was a little more than $605 million for fiscal year 2016.

The president can fire the director only for cause.

The inability to oust the director particularly irks lawmakers who oppose Mr. Cordray, the beneficiary of a recess appointment by President Obama to circumvent Senate Republicans. To underscore his unfettered rule over the financial industry, they have dubbed him “King Richard.”

House Financial Services Committee Chairman Jeb Hensarling, Texas Republican, said the Trump administration working with Congress has two options: eliminate the CFPB and return oversight to bank regulators, or dramatically reorganize the bureau by imposing budget controls and replacing the single director with a bipartisan board.

“Right now, it is the legislature, it is cop on the beat, it is prosecutor, it is judge and jury, and most importantly to the American people, it is unconstitutional,” Mr. Hensarling said after attending Mr. Trump’s signing of the executive order.

The attacks on the agency were bolstered in October by a federal appeals court ruling that declared the CFPB’s structure unconstitutional. The ruling didn’t shut down the agency but directed Congress to amend the statute that crated the office.

Providing a taste of the battle to come, Ms. Warren accused Mr. Trump and congressional Republicans of targeting the CFPB to help Wall Street and giant corporations take advantage of working-class Americans.

“Always remember: The Republicans are not on your side. They’re rushing to unleash the big banks. They’re rushing to gut the consumer agency that has forced banks to give $12 billion back to customers they cheated,” she said in a speech Saturday to the Progressive Congress summit in Baltimore.

Indeed, the CFPB has racked up success that could provide a powerful argument for its supporters.

The agency’s website says enforcement actions have returned $11.7 billion in relief to more than 27 million consumers.

In one of its most celebrated cases, CFPB helped uncover Wells Fargo’s opening of about 2 million unauthorized accounts for customers. The bank was hit with $185 million in penalties.

Last month, the agency levied a $3.5 million penalty on Prospect Mortgage for paying illegal kickbacks for mortgage business referrals and sued Navient Corp., the country’s largest student loan servicer, for ripping off borrowers.

Navient said the allegations were false and the company will defend against them in court.

Critics insist other regulatory agencies already had the power to take those actions.

Still, it makes the CFPB easier to defend than the Dodd-Frank Act’s banking regulations, which arguably discourage loans and restrain economic growth without eliminating the biggest problems of the 2008 crisis, such as too-big-to-fail banks that necessitate taxpayer bailouts.

White House press secretary Sean Spicer demurred when pressed about plans for the agency.

“That’s an area that we need to work with Congress on,” Mr. Spicer said.

The Republican-run Congress is eager to work on the CFPB and a range of other Dodd-Frank regulations.

One of the first bills heading to Mr. Trump’s desk is a repeal of a rule spawned by Dodd-Frank that would have required U.S. mining and drilling companies to reveal all payments they make to foreign governments.

The Senate gave final approval to the repeal Friday under the Congressional Review Act, which allows Congress and the president to quickly void lame-duck presidential rules.

Mr. Trump last week also signed a memorandum to delay — and potentially cancel — a sweeping federal rule that would impose new responsibilities on financial advisers, another move guaranteed to provoke heated objections from consumer advocates and liberal lawmakers.

The memorandum targets the Department of Labor’s fiduciary rule that, when it begins to phase in April 10, would elevate all financial professionals dealing with retirement plans to the level of a fiduciary, requiring retirement account managers to work in the best interests of their clients, not their companies.

The Trump administration, siding with the financial services industry, said the rule would force advisers to limit the investment choices offered to clients.

“We think this was a complete miss on what they were trying to do. It has completely unintended consequences,” said a senior White House official who worked on the memorandum. “It took away a huge amount of investment options.”

Supporters of the fiduciary rule argue that it protects consumers by requiring commission-based brokers and insurance agents to disclose conflicts of interest and forcing them to recommend the lowest-cost 401(k) plans, individual retirement accounts or other retirement savings plans.

The rule would affect more than $3 trillion of retirement assets in the U.S.

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