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Trump 'Too Busy Siding With Wall Street,' Says Warren as US Credit Card Debt Crisis Explodes
A new analysis shows that over 40% of all US adults are unable to fully pay off their credit cards each month, leaving them trapped in "cycles of persistent debt."
Mar 17, 2026
US President Donald Trump promised repeatedly during his 2024 campaign to temporarily cap credit card interest rates at 10%, but—in the face of Wall Street opposition—he has done nothing concrete to fulfill that pledge since returning to the White House.
That failure, according to an analysis released Tuesday, has so far cost Americans $134.5 billion in interest payments. Every day, The Century Foundation (TCF) and Protect Borrowers estimate, US credit card holders are accruing $368 million more in interest than they would have if rates were capped at 10%. The average interest rate for credit cards in the US is currently around 25%, according to a Forbes measure.
In January, Trump called on Congress to approve a 10% cap on credit card interest rates for one year, and bipartisan legislation has been introduced in both the House and the Senate. But the president has not pressured bank-friendly Republicans to back the measure, and he vowed earlier this month to refuse to sign any legislation that reaches his desk unless lawmakers approve a massive voter suppression bill that is likely dead in the Senate.
“Trump could work with Congress to deliver on his promise to cap credit card interest rates at 10%—saving the average American with credit card debt about $900 a year," Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) said Tuesday. "But he is too busy siding with Wall Street.”
The new analysis by TCF and Protect Borrowers shows that over 40% of adults in the US are "unable to pay off their credit card bills each month, trapping them in cycles of persistent debt that balloons ever-higher due to record-high, industry-inflated interest rates and predatory fees."
Collectively, around 111 million Americans carry more than $1 trillion in credit card debt month to month, according to the analysis, and more than 27 million Americans can't afford more than the minimum monthly payment on their cards.
"Americans’ monthly credit card payments have grown by nearly 40% since 2018, a trend that is continuing unabated under President Trump," TCF and Protect Borrowers found. "From 2018 to 2025, the average monthly credit card payment rose by $553, or 38% (from $1,441 to $1,994). This growth far outstrips inflation."
"Since Trump’s inauguration alone, the average annual amount that Americans pay in credit card bills grew by an additional $1,177 (from $22,756 to $23,933)," the groups added. "The pace of this growth suggests that, in large part due to soaring interest rates, families today devote more income to credit card payments than at any point in history."
The nation's worsening credit card debt crisis comes amid a broader affordability crisis in an economy that Trump has hailed as the "greatest" in history, despite all the glaring evidence to the contrary.
A West Health-Gallup Center on Healthcare in America survey published last week found that roughly a third of respondents—equivalent to more than 80 million Americans—said they have had to skip a meal, borrow money, cut back on utilities, or make other painful trade-offs to afford healthcare expenses over the last 12 months as prices continue to rise across the economy.
“Grocery, utility, and healthcare bills are piling up, and Americans are increasingly turning to credit cards—some carrying interest rates exceeding 22%—just to make ends meet,” Jennifer Zhang, policy, research, and data Analyst at Protect Borrowers and co-author of the new analysis, said Tuesday.
“President Trump promised to tackle crushing credit card interest rates by January 20 of this year," Zhang added, "but that deadline has come and gone."
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‘Arsonist as Fire Chief’: Fed Appoints Wall Street Lobbyist to Key Bank Oversight Role
"There can be little doubt that having a Wall Street lawyer-lobbyist in charge of supervising and regulating his former Wall Street clients will likely result in a catastrophe for the American people."
Feb 25, 2026
The Federal Reserve board has quietly appointed a prominent Wall Street lawyer and lobbyist as the central bank's director of supervision and regulation, a move that one critic said was worse than "putting the fox in charge of the henhouse."
"This is like appointing a lifelong arsonist as a fire chief," Dennis Kelleher, president and CEO of Better Markets, said in response to the Fed's decision to put Randall Guynn in a position to regulate the industry he has long represented.
Politico reported Tuesday that "Guynn, a prominent Wall Street lawyer, will become the next director of supervision and regulation at the Federal Reserve, effective March 8."
Before joining Fed staff last year as an adviser to the central bank's vice chair for supervision, Guynn worked for close to four decades at the corporate law firm Davis Polk & Wardwell, where he recently chaired the company's Financial Institutions Group. According to Guynn's bio, he has "focused on advising banks of all sizes on their most critical financial regulatory issues and transactions."
Reuters, which first reported earlier this month that the Fed was expected to appoint Guynn to the bank policing role, noted that the decision "would mark a departure for the central bank, which since at least 1977 has filled the job with long-serving Fed career staff."
"The only reasonable expectation is that his leadership of Fed supervision and regulation will accelerate the Fed’s current push to implement policies that favor the biggest, most dangerous banks."
In a statement, Kelleher of Better Markets described Guynn as a "lawyer-lobbyist" who has "spent his entire professional life—almost 40 years—zealously and exclusively representing the interests of the financial industry, including the biggest financial firms on Wall Street."
A 2024 paper published in Cambridge University's Perspectives on Politics journal identified Guynn as part of a "vast subterranean world of regulatory influence-seeking" that has managed to escape the scrutiny of legislative lobbying.
"Reporting exceptions under the Lobbying Disclosure Act allow many of the most powerful advocates to characterize their activity as lawyering, not lobbying, and thereby fly under the radar," the paper notes.
Kelleher argued that, given Guynn's history, "the only reasonable expectation is that his leadership of Fed supervision and regulation will accelerate the Fed’s current push to implement policies that favor the biggest, most dangerous banks—his former clients just ten months ago and presumably his current circle of professional and personal friends."
"That will crush small banks, harm the Main Street economy, and make another financial crash inevitable. That’s what happened in the early 2000s when the Fed’s misguided belief that Wall Street could regulate itself directly led to the catastrophic 2008 crash," said Kelleher. "We don’t have to speculate. We can look at his attached record or read the remarkable story of how, as a lawyer-lobbyist prior to joining the Fed staff last year, he was instrumental in pushing through a back-door merger approval by the Fed."
"There can be little doubt that having a Wall Street lawyer-lobbyist in charge of supervising and regulating his former Wall Street clients will likely result in a catastrophe for the American people," he added.
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Sweeping Coalition Backs AOC-Sanders Bill to Cap Credit Card Interest Rates at 10%
"Working families continue to struggle with unprecedented credit card debt and deserve to see Congress take legislative action to address this growing crisis."
Feb 06, 2026
As polling continues to show US consumers are pessimistic about an economy in which they face rising costs for everything from groceries to healthcare and housing under President Donald Trump, a "historic and diverse coalition" this week called on Congress to pass a bipartisan bill that would cap credit card interest rates at 10%.
The current average credit card interest rate is nearly double that, at 19.61%, according to Bankrate. It was even higher, over 20%, when US Sens. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) and Josh Hawley (R-Mo.) introduced the bill a year ago. Reps. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) and Anna Paulina Luna (R-Fla.) lead the legislation in the House of Representatives.
Their push came in response to an unfulfilled pledge from Trump, whose campaign said in September 2024 that he "has promised to cap interest rates at 10% to provide temporary and immediate relief for hardworking Americans who are struggling to make ends meet and cannot afford hefty interest payments on top of the skyrocketing costs of mortgages, rent, groceries, and gas."
The Thursday letter to congressional leaders—signed by dozens of civil rights, consumer protection, labor, veteran, and other groups—points to that promise, as well as Trump's January social media post calling for a one-year 10% cap. It also notes that "in response to widespread Wall Street opposition to the president's recent announcement, Trump officials have begun to backtrack—instead promoting 'Trump Cards' that banks could voluntarily offer with temporary 10% interest rates."
"While the Trump administration appears to be twisting itself into knots to appease Wall Street bankers, working families continue to struggle with unprecedented credit card debt and deserve to see Congress take legislative action to address this growing crisis," the coalition stressed. "We urge your offices/committees to advance these bipartisan bills immediately and make this policy a reality."
Illustrating the need for the policy, the letter states that "Americans owe $1.21 trillion in aggregate credit card debt," "groceries now make up the majority of credit card purchases for most Americans," and "older Americans are charging everyday purchases like gas, food, healthcare expenses, and even utilities on their credit cards."
"Not only are more Americans having to lean on their credit cards to make ends meet, but more are falling behind. Today, more than 12% of credit card debt is 90 days or more past due," the letter continues. "As Americans find themselves deeper in debt, credit card companies have been raking in record profits."
The federal bill would "save families $100 billion per year and provide interest savings of $899 per person on average per year," but also "not restrict most Americans' access to credit—directly refuting common banking lobbyist talking points," the coalition explained, citing research from Vanderbilt University. "Instead, banks would absorb the rate cut through a combinationof reduced profits, reduced advertising expenses, and reduced rewards to customers with lower credit scores (who would benefit more from the rate cuts)."
It also cites a recent analysis by the letter's lead group, Protect Borrowers, showing that "credit card delinquency rates in states that President Trump won are nearly 5 percentage points higher than in other states—with states like Mississippi, Louisiana, Alabama, Arkansas and South Carolina having the highest credit card delinquency rates."
When big banks charge 24% or 30% interest on credit cards, they are not engaged in the business of "making credit available." They are involved in extortion and loan sharking.Yes, we need to cap credit card interest rates at 10% and stop Wall Street from ripping off Americans.
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— Senator Bernie Sanders (@sanders.senate.gov) February 2, 2026 at 4:36 PM
"By providing billions of dollars in economic relief to working families, this legislation directly responds to the promises that candidate Donald Trump made to the American people last year," the groups wrote. "Recent polling has found that it is also incredibly popular by a jaw-dropping 8-to-1 margin among American voters across all political parties, spanning age, gender, race, and education level."
"It is clear: the American people support policymakers taking action to address the growing credit card crisis that is drowning millions of American families across the country in debt," the coalition concluded. "We stand ready to work with your offices to ensure that this bill becomes law and that working families get the economic relief they were promised and deserve."
Sanders and Hawley have similarly highlighted Trump's calls for the 10% rate cap in Fox News op-eds pushing for their legislation. In a Monday piece, Sanders wrote that "when Wall Street's greed and recklessness brought the economy to the verge of collapse in 2008, causing millions of Americans to lose their homes, jobs, and life savings, the taxpayers came to the rescue."
"The Federal Reserve gave these huge banks trillions of dollars in emergency loans at virtually zero interest. We bailed out the banks," he added. "Now it's time for Congress to stand with working families, end Wall Street greed, and pass legislation that caps credit card interest rates at 10%."
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