The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, the watchdog created after the 2008 financial meltdown and largely muzzled in the Trump era, is poised to start barking again.

The agency will focus first on enforcing legal protections for distressed renters, student borrowers and others facing growing debt that its previous leadership has been lax about imposing during the pandemic.

But the CFPB — which President Biden has tapped 38-year-old Rohit Chopra to lead — is also likely to take an unprecedentedly tough line against industry giants it finds engaging in abusive practices, former agency officials advising the Biden team say.

“It’s a matter of ramping back up,” said Richard Cordray, the CFPB’s first director, who stepped down in late 2017. The agency under President Donald Trump was “picking at odds and ends. They ramped down, and it’s a matter of changing direction.”

That will mark a dramatic turn. Just last year, consumer complaints to the agency rose by 60 percent over 2019, agency data show, setting a record as the economic crisis wiped out millions of jobs and pushed lower-income Americans to the brink….

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