WASHINGTON: US President Donald Trump said on Friday he was calling for a one-year cap on credit card interest rates at 10 percent starting on January 20 but he did not provide details on how his plan will come to fruition or how he planned to make companies comply.
Trump also made the pledge during the campaign for the 2024 election that he won but analysts dismissed it at the time saying that 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 not having delivered 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 percent,” 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.
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 US banks and credit card issuers like American Express, Capital One Financial Corp, JPMorgan , Citigroup and Bank of America did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
US Senator Bernie Sanders, a fierce Trump critic, and Senator Josh Hawley, who belongs to Trump’s Republican Party, have previously introduced bipartisan legislation aimed at capping credit card interest rates at 10 percent for five years. This bill explicitly directs credit card companies to limit rates as part of broader consumer relief legislation.
Democratic US Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Republican Congresswoman Anna Paulina Luna have also introduced a House of Representatives bill to cap credit card interest rates at 10 percent, reflecting cross-aisle interest in addressing high rates.
Billionaire fund manager Bill Ackman, who endorsed Trump in the last elections, said the US president’s call was a “mistake.”
“This is a mistake,” Ackman wrote on X.
“Without being able to charge rates adequate enough to cover losses and earn an adequate return on equity, credit card lenders will cancel cards for millions of consumers who will have to turn to loan sharks for credit at rates higher than and on terms inferior to what they previously paid.”
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.
Trump calls for one year cap on credit card interest rates at 10 percent
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Trump calls for one year cap on credit card interest rates at 10 percent
- Trump says Americans have been ‘ripped off’ by credit card companies
- Lawmakers from both parties have raised concerns about rates
Southeast Asian countries repatriate nationals from Cambodia as thousands flee scam centers
- Almost 2,800 Indonesians have sought consular support to return home since mid-January
- Malaysia, Philippines also repatriate citizens after Cambodian PM orders crackdown on crime networks
Southeast Asian countries are repatriating their nationals from Cambodia, as thousands are estimated to have fled scam compounds over recent weeks following Phnom Penh’s pledge for a fresh crackdown on the multibillion-dollar industry.
Scam centers have flourished in parts of Southeast Asia in recent years, with hundreds of thousands of people lured to work in illicit operations in countries like Cambodia and Myanmar, according to a 2023 report by the UN Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights.
A wave of foreign nationals who were either released or have escaped from scam compounds across Cambodia since mid-January have returned to their home countries in the past week after seeking consular support from their respective embassies, officials said.
“The number of Indonesians formerly involved with online scam syndicates who are reporting to the Indonesian Embassy in Phnom Penh continues to increase. Since Jan. 16 to Jan. 30, we have recorded 2,795 Indonesian nationals,” the Indonesian Embassy in Phnom Penh said in a statement on Saturday.
At least 36 Indonesian nationals were repatriated on Friday, while another 30 are scheduled to return to Indonesia over the weekend.
Malaysia has also “rescued and repatriated” 29 Malaysians from Cambodia who were “victims of an online syndicate,” its embassy in Phnom Penh said earlier this week, while the Philippines repatriated 13 Filipinos identified as human trafficking victims last Sunday, the Department of Migrant Workers in Manila said in a statement.
Human rights organization Amnesty International estimated that thousands of people have been released or escaped from at least 17 scamming compounds across Cambodia in recent weeks, with interviews indicating that some were “subjected to grave abuses including rape and torture.”
The survivors are also from countries beyond the region, including Brazil, Nigeria, and Bangladesh, Amnesty said, as it called out the Cambodian government for ignoring the growing humanitarian crisis.
“This mass exodus from scamming compounds has created a humanitarian crisis on the streets that is being ignored by the Cambodian government. Amid scenes of chaos and suffering, thousands of traumatized survivors are being left to fend for themselves with no state support,” said Montse Ferrer, Amnesty International’s regional research director.
“This is an international crisis on Cambodian soil. Our researchers have met people from Asia, Africa, Europe, and the Americas. They are in urgent need of consular assistance in order to help get them home and out of harm’s way.”
The latest development comes after Cambodian Prime Minister Hun Manet ordered authorities to step up efforts to eradicate online scam networks in the country, a directive that was followed with the arrest of several key figures.
Among those arrested was Chen Zhi, a Chinese-born Cambodian tycoon, who was extradited to China earlier this month.
Chen was sanctioned by the UK and the US in October last year, with the US Department of Treasury accusing him of running “a transnational criminal empire through online investment scams targeting Americans and others worldwide.”
The Global Anti-Scam Alliance estimates that $442 billion was lost to scammers in 2025.
