A shopper pays with a credit card at the farmer’s market in San Francisco on March 27, 2025.
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U.S. President Donald Trump said on Friday he was calling for a one-year cap on credit card interest rates at 10% starting on Jan. 20, but he did not provide details on how his plan would come to fruition or how he planned to make companies comply.
Trump also made the pledge during the 2024 campaign, which he won, but analysts dismissed it at the time, saying such a step required congressional approval.
Lawmakers from both the Democratic and Republican parties have raised concerns about high rates and have called for those to be addressed. Republicans currently hold a narrow majority in both the Senate and the House of Representatives.
There have been some legislative efforts in Congress to pursue such a proposal but they are yet to become law and in his post Trump did not offer explicit support to any specific bill.
Opposition lawmakers have criticized Trump, a Republican, for failing to deliver on his campaign pledge.
“Effective January 20, 2026, I, as President of the United States, am calling for a one year cap on Credit Card Interest Rates of 10%,” Trump wrote on Truth Social, without providing more details.
“Please be informed that we will no longer let the American Public be ‘ripped off’ by Credit Card Companies,” Trump added.
U.S. Senator Elizabeth Warren, a Democrat in the Senate Banking Committee, said Trump’s call was meaningless without a bill being passed by Congress.
“Begging credit card companies to play nice is a joke. I said a year ago if Trump was serious, I’d work to pass a bill to cap rates,” Warren said, while criticizing Trump’s attempts to gut the U.S. Consumer Financial Protection Bureau.
The White House did not immediately respond to a request for comment on details of the call from Trump, but said on social media without elaborating that the president was capping the rates.
Some major U.S. banks and credit card issuers like American Express, Capital One Financial, JPMorgan Chase, Citigroup and Bank of America did not respond to a request for comment.
Some banking advocacy groups said in a joint statement that a 10% interest rate cap would “reduce credit availability” and “only drive consumers toward less regulated, more costly alternatives.”
The statement came from the Consumer Bankers Association, Bank Policy Institute, American Bankers Association, Financial Services Forum and Independent Community Bankers of America.
Lawmakers have raised concerns about rates
Independent U.S. Sen Bernie Sanders of Vermont, a fierce Trump critic, and Sen. Josh Hawley of Missouri, a Republican, have previously introduced bipartisan legislation to cap credit card interest rates at 10% for five years. This bill explicitly directs credit card companies to limit rates as part of broader consumer relief legislation.
Democratic U.S. Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York and Republican Rep. Anna Paulina Luna of Florida have also introduced a bill in the House to cap credit card interest rates at 10%, reflecting cross-aisle interest in addressing high rates.
Billionaire fund manager Bill Ackman, who endorsed Trump in the last elections, said on X the U.S. president’s call was a “mistake.”
Last year, the Trump administration moved to scrap a credit card late fee rule from the era of former President Joe Biden.
The Trump administration had asked a federal court to throw out a regulation capping credit card late fees at $8, saying it agreed with business and banking groups that alleged the rule was illegal. A federal judge subsequently threw out the rule.