A U.S. dollar banknote, Visa and Mastercard cards are placed on a keyboard in this illustration taken September 24, 2025. REUTERS/Dado Ruvic/Illustration
Donald Trump has an ambitious plan to cap credit card interest amid widespread voter fears about the cost of living, one with rare Democrat backing, but according to a Wednesday report from The New York Sun, the plan has so far received rare pushback from Republicans.
Amid his push to tackle affordability issues, Trump has demanded that banks cap their credit card interest rates at 10 percent, well below half of the average of 23.79 percent for all new cards last month, per Lending Tree. According to the Sun, Trump said that banks must make this cut before January 20, or "very severe things" might happen to them. Trump alleged that credit card companies have "abused the public" with their current interest rates.
This is part of a broader trend of the president attempting to strong-arm "independent agencies and private businesses" into complying with his economic goals, alongside his attempts to pressure the Federal Reserve into slashing interest rates and his demand that corporations stop purchasing single-family homes.
This plan for credit card interest rates was among the topics Trump discussed in a recent phone call with the staunch progressive, Sen. Elizabeth Warren, a Massachusetts Democrat. The White House characterized the call, in which the two also discussed Warren's housing reform bill, as "productive."
Despite this rare example of cooperation between Trump and a Democrat, the president's credit card pitch has gotten the cold shoulder from his own party. House Speaker Mike Johnson warned that the idea was "not thought through," and would have the effect of halting credit and lending altogether for many Americans.
“The president is the ideas guy,” Johnson said on Tuesday. “You would need legislation to do something like that and we’d have a lot of work to build consensus around it, but you’ve gotta be very careful if you go forward [with] that... In our zeal to bring down costs, you don’t want to have negative secondary effects of that. What some of the experts have said is, well, if you do that, then the credit card companies … would just stop lending money.”
Senate Majority Leader John Thune expressed similar concerns as his House counterpart.
“I think that would probably deprive an awful lot of people of access to credit around the country," Thune argued. "Credit cards would probably become debit cards. That’s not something I’m out there advocating for. Let’s put it that way.”