Business
Trump calls for Congress to enact 10% credit card interest rate cap; bank stocks rise
President Donald Trump on Wednesday urged U.S. lawmakers to pass legislation to limit credit card rates to 10%, following his social media post this month ordering banks to voluntarily lower their rates.
“I’m asking Congress to cap credit card interest rates at 10% for one year, and this will help millions of Americans save for a home,” Trump said from the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland.
“They charge Americans interest rates of 28%, 30%, 31%, 32%,” Trump said. “Whatever happened to usury?”
Shares of banks climbed after the comments. The KBW Bank Index rose 2.2% in morning trading. Capital One, which relies on cards for most of its revenue, advanced 1.9%.
Among the options that the Trump administration had for applying pressure to American banks over card rates, the legislative path may be the least threatening to the industry. Sens. Josh Hawley, R-Mo., and Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., introduced a bill last year that would limit card APRs at 10% for five years, but that proposal has stalled in Congress.
Analysts including Sanjay Sakhrani of KBW have said it is unlikely that a card bill will have enough bipartisan support to become law. Lawmakers from Trump’s own Republican Party, including House Speaker Mike Johnson, have expressed caution when it comes to card price controls.
“If this is the path, the odds of implementation are low,” Sakhrani said in an interview. “There is a lot of Republican leadership that opposes the idea” and other industries, including airlines and retailers, would be hurt by the policy.
It’s unclear whether pressure from Trump — who holds massive sway among GOP lawmakers — will improve the plan’s chances of passing.
Breaking ‘the law?’
The episode may show the limits of Trump’s ability to cajole the financial industry into voluntarily giving up billions of dollars in revenue to support his election year affordability push.
After Trump’s Jan. 9 Truth Social post on the rate cap, banks said on earnings conference calls that such a limit would have unintended consequences, including that lenders would simply cancel accounts for many card customers, especially those with lower credit scores.
The president told reporters that lenders who didn’t comply on rates will be “in violation of the law,” but behind closed doors, bankers countered that they were already compliant with the law.
Privately, bankers and their lobbyists told CNBC they hoped to fend off the president’s request, given the difficulty of passing legislation.
Several large credit card lenders contacted by CNBC on Tuesday said they had made no changes to their interest rates, but they all declined to be identified. KBW’s Sakhrani said he wasn’t aware of any major card player that cut its rates.
On Wednesday, JPMorgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon told a Davos audience that the U.S. government should test out the rate cap in just two states, Vermont and Massachusetts. Those are the home states of Sanders and Democratic Sen. Elizabeth Warren, who have both championed interest rate caps.
Doing so would teach “a real lesson” to those in favor of price controls, Dimon said.
“It would be an economic disaster,” Dimon said. “In the worst case, you’d have a drastic reduction of the credit card business” for 80% of Americans, he said.
People walk past a Nike store in New York City, on April 2, 2025.
Kylie Cooper | Reuters
Nike announced a new round of layoffs Thursday affecting approximately 1,400 employees across the organization, mostly concentrated in its technology department.
In a note from COO Venkatesh Alagirisamy, the company said the layoffs were part of Nike’s broader “Win Now” turnaround strategy aiming to reshape its technology team, modernize its Air manufacturing, move some of its Converse Footwear operations and integrate its materials supply chain work into its footwear and apparel supply chain teams.
“Collectively, these changes will result in a reduction of approximately 1,400 roles in global operations, with the majority in technology,” Alagirisamy wrote. “These reductions are very hard for the teammates directly affected and for the teams around them, too.”
A Nike spokesperson said the layoffs are about better positioning the organization for the current pace of sports and accelerating its growth. The layoffs affect employees across North America, Asia and Europe and represent less than 2% of the company’s total global head count.
“This is not a new direction,” Alagirisamy wrote. “It is the next phase of the work already underway.”
Affected employees will be notified beginning Thursday, Nike added.
CEO Elliott Hill has been working to turn Nike around after years of slumping sales. While Hill has made some initial progress, it’s come with some bumps in the road.
Nike announced 775 job cuts in January, primarily at its U.S.-based distribution centers, due to the company’s work in accelerating its use of automation. At the time, the company said the cuts are part of Nike’s goal to return to “long-term, profitable growth.”
Those layoffs came on top of a round of cuts last summer that affected less than 1% of Nike’s corporate staff as part of the company’s efforts to realign the business.
In its third fiscal quarter earnings report last month, the retailer warned that sales will continue to fall for the rest of the year, primarily led by an anticipated 20% decline in China during the current quarter.
— CNBC’s Jessica Golden contributed to this report.
A key reason for the layoffs is Meta’s increased spending in other areas of the company, including AI, for which it will this year spend $135bn (£100bn). This is roughly equal to the amount it has spent on AI in the previous three years combined, according to a person who viewed the memo.
The Government has been urged to stick to its pledge to ban ticket touting amid concerns the policy will be left out of next month’s King’s Speech.
In November, the Government announced that new rules making it illegal to resell tickets for live events for profit would end the “industrial-scale” touting that has caused misery for millions of fans.
Ministers confirmed plans to make it illegal for tickets to concerts, theatre, comedy, sport and other live events to be resold for more than their original cost.
The Labour manifesto promised stronger protections to stop consumers being scammed or priced out of events by touts, who frequently use bots to buy tickets in bulk the moment they go on sale, which they can then sell on for huge mark-ups on secondary ticketing websites.
The proposed rules make it illegal for tickets to be sold at a price above the face value – defined as the original price plus unavoidable fees including service charges.
Service fees will be capped to prevent the price limit being undermined by platforms, which will have a legal duty to monitor and enforce compliance, and individuals will be banned from reselling more tickets than they were entitled to buy in the initial sale.
A host of globally renowned artists have backed the plan, including Radiohead, Dua Lipa and Coldplay.
Following a report in the Guardian that the minister responsible for the policy, Ian Murray, had told music industry groups not to worry if the measure was not part of the King’s Speech on May 13, the Government said it required new primary legislation that it was working to deliver at the earliest opportunity.
A Government spokeswoman said: “Ticket touts are a blight on the live events industry, causing misery for millions of fans.
“We set out decisive plans last year to stamp out touting once and for all, and we are committed to delivering on these for the benefit of fans and industry.”
The music industry and Which? raised concerns about the suggestion of any delay, as sites appeared to show touts selling tickets for the Radio 1 Big Weekend in Sunderland well above the two-ticket limit for buyers and at vastly inflated prices.
Annabella Coldrick, chief executive of the Music Managers Forum, said: “2026 was supposed to mark this Government moving ‘from announcements to action’ but we have little evidence of this to date.
“A ban on ticket touting was one of only two music-related commitments in the Labour manifesto, alongside fixing EU touring.
“These are widely supported, pro-growth measures that will deliver tangible benefits to the British public. However, if ticket resale legislation is not presented in the King’s Speech, it will have the opposite effect and continue to cost those constituents hundreds of millions of pounds a year.
“This Government needs to stand by its promises and get it done.”
Adam Webb, campaign manager at FanFair Alliance, said: “The Government has a big decision to make: will they ‘put fans first’ or not?
“Last November, ministers committed to ‘bold new measures’ to ban online ticket touting and support consumers.
“Enacting these measures should be a no-brainer but, if legislation is not presented in the upcoming King’s Speech, the cycle of industrial-scale exploitation will continue.”
Lisa Webb, consumer law expert at Which?, said: “The Government has promised to put fans first but, if this legislation is not included in the King’s Speech, the only ones celebrating will be the rip-off secondary ticketing websites and online touts.”
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