A shopper pays with a credit card at the San Francisco farmers market on March 27, 2025.
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U.S. President Donald Trump said Friday he is calling for a one-year cap on credit card interest rates at 10% starting Jan. 20, but he did not provide details on how his plan would come to fruition or how he plans to force businesses to comply.
Trump also made the pledge during the 2024 campaign, which he won, but analysts rejected it at the time, saying such a move required congressional approval.
Lawmakers from both the Democratic and Republican parties have raised concerns about the high rates and called for addressing them. Republicans currently hold a slim majority in the Senate and the House of Representatives.
There have been some legislative efforts in Congress to act on such a proposal, but they have not yet passed, and in his term, Trump has not offered explicit support for any specific bill.
Opposition lawmakers have criticized Trump, a Republican, for failing to keep his campaign promises.
“Effective January 20, 2026, as President of the United States, I am calling for a one-year cap at 10% on credit card interest rates,” Trump wrote on Truth Social, without providing further details.
“Please be advised that we will no longer allow the American public to be ‘ripped off’ by credit card companies,” Trump added.
U.S. Sen. Elizabeth Warren, a Democrat on the Senate Banking Committee, said Trump’s call was meaningless without Congress passing a bill.
“Begging credit card companies to play nice is a joke. I said a year ago that if Trump was serious, I would 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 the details of Trump’s call, but said on social media, without elaborating, that the president was capping tariffs.
Some major US banks and credit card issuers like American Express, Capital One Financial, JPMorgan Chase, Citi Group And Bank of America did not respond to a request for comment.
Some banking industry advocacy groups said in a joint statement that a 10% interest rate cap would “reduce the availability of credit” and “only drive consumers toward less regulated and more expensive alternatives.”
The statement comes from the Consumer Bankers Association, the Bank Policy Institute, the American Bankers Association, the Financial Services Forum and the Independent Community Bankers of America.
Lawmakers raised concerns about rates
Independent U.S. Sen. Bernie Sanders of Vermont, a staunch critic of Trump, and Sen. Josh Hawley of Missouri, a Republican, have already introduced bipartisan legislation to cap credit card interest rates at 10% for five years. This bill explicitly directs credit card companies to cap rates as part of broader pro-consumer legislation.
Democratic U.S. Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York and Republican Rep. Anna Paulina Luna of Florida also introduced a bill in the House to cap credit card interest rates at 10 percent, reflecting cross-party interest in tackling high rates.
Billionaire fund manager Bill Ackman, who supported Trump in the last election, said on X that the US president’s call was a “mistake”.
Last year, the Trump administration decided to scrap a late fee rule on credit cards dating from the days of former President Joe Biden.
The Trump administration had asked a federal court to strike down a regulation capping late fees on credit cards at $8, saying it agreed with business and banking groups who said the rule was illegal. A federal judge later threw out the rule.
