Summary:
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Trump calls for 10% credit-card APR cap for one year, effective Jan 20, 2026.
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No enforcement detail: unclear if voluntary or government-mandated.
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Part of a populist “affordability” burst this week (incl. MBS buying idea and ban on institutional home buyers).
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Big gap to current pricing: Fed data shows 22.30% (Nov 2025) on the key credit-card rate series.
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Without legislation / clear authority, this looks like headline politics first, policy mechanics later.
President Donald Trump has called for a one-year cap of 10% on US credit-card interest rates, saying consumers are being “ripped off” and framing the move as an “affordability” push. The proposal would start January 20, 2026, the first anniversary of his return to the White House, but Trump provided no detail on the mechanism, leaving open whether he expects voluntary compliance from issuers or is signalling some form of government enforcement.
The lack of detail matters, because credit-card pricing is not something a president can simply “announce” into existence. In practice, a hard cap would typically require Congressional legislation and/or actions through the US regulatory framework. Yet the main federal watchdog for card practices, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB), has been a long-running target of conservatives, and the Trump administration has pursued steps that would reduce or constrain its reach.
What Trump is doing, clearly, is leaning into a string of populist, social-media-first affordability declarations this week, high on punchy intent, low on executable detail. In the days prior he posted about ordering “his representatives” to buy mortgage bonds to push borrowing costs lower, and about banning institutional investors from buying single-family homes. Together, the sequence reads as an attempt to reclaim the cost-of-living narrative with simple targets (banks, Wall Street, institutions) and headline-friendly numbers (10%). This all, of course, in an election year (mid-terms) with Trump’s popularity continuing to make new lows and therefore threatening the Republican majorities in Congress. I posted earlier in the week that I expect populist announcements and an eventual hit to the US dollar (not yet though, the dollar higher on Friday: investingLive Americas market news wrap: Nonfarm payrolls a touch soft, no tariff decision)
On the numbers, the policy would be a dramatic cut versus prevailing rates: the Federal Reserve’s series for commercial bank credit-card interest (accounts assessed interest) shows ~22.30% in late 2025. That gap underscores why markets and issuers will focus on “how” rather than “what”, and why, without a clear legislative pathway, the announcement looks more like political signalling than an immediately actionable policy shift.
Congressional interest in caps is real and notably bipartisan, past proposals have sought a 10% ceiling, but they have not become law. Until a bill advances (or a credible regulatory/administrative route is spelled out), the most likely near-term impact is messaging and volatility in related headlines, rather than an instant repricing of consumer credit.
This article was written by Eamonn Sheridan at investinglive.com.