Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump floated a 10% temporary cap on credit card interest rates, a move that would allow “working Americans to catch up.”
Trump introduced the plan at a campaign rally in Uniondale, New York, on Wednesday night. The average interest rate on credit cards was 21.5% earlier this year, according to the Federal Reserve, around the highest levels in a decade.
“While working Americans catch up, we’re going to put a temporary cap on credit-card interest rates,” Trump said at the rally. “We can’t let them make 25 and 30 percent.”
Trump’s plan was met with cheers, though not from industry analysts. One said that such a move would compel banks to stop lending to borrowers in lower- and middle-class households.
“Wall Street banks would say, how much further risk do I want to bring on given the fact that my revenue is shrinking?” Nilson Report publisher David Robertson told The Wall Street Journal. “That’s where the rubber meets the road.”
Peter Schiff, chief economist at Euro Pacific Asset Management, told the New York Post, “That would destroy the industry and millions of Americans would lose their credit cards. There are heavy losses in credit cards from people who don’t pay. So they need the high interest rates to offset that.”