Why Trump’s 10% Interest Rate Cap Actually Makes Sense (Even If Economists Hate It)

For decades, Americans were told that access to credit was “empowerment.” Swipe now, pay later. Borrow your way into the middle class. The result wasn’t prosperity, it was an economy where everything got more expensive and everyone got more trapped.

Donald Trump is blowing up that model.

He’s proposing 10% cap on credit-card interest. And I LOVE IT.

This is the first time in a generation that a major political figure has directly challenged the debt-based economy that has hollowed out American households.

The critics are already screaming. Even on the conservative side. They say caps “distort markets.” They say lenders will “ration credit.” They say this is just left-wing price control in a red hat.

Those arguments would be compelling…if we still lived in anything resembling a free market.

But we don’t. (Perhaps this is a NEWSFLASH to some.)

Thanks in large part to corporate meddling and a government eager to serve their interests, our market is nothing near the free-market ideal many conservatives like me grew up promoting. 

We actually live in a financed-to-death economy where whatever income isn’t taxed away is bled dry by interest. Credit didn’t make things more affordable, it allowed corporations to raise prices endlessly because consumers could always borrow more. Housing. Cars. Healthcare. Tuition. Groceries. Everything became a payment plan. That’s not prosperity. And it’s not the American dream, which, to be clear, should not come with high interest rates. 

Now, of course, the same corporations that offshored jobs, imported cheap labor, and laid off American workers for decades want us to cry for them because their bottom line is hit by Trump’s cap on their usury.

I don’t feel bad for them at all. And I don’t feel bad about increasing regulation in this instance. 

We already have a massively regulated economy! It’s just regulated in favor of Wall Street, private equity, and multinational corporations. At this point, the question isn’t “regulation or no regulation.” It’s who the system serves. Does it serve banks that charge 28% interest to families buying groceries? Or does it serve the people actually doing the buying?

Truthfully, I used to be a deregulatory purist too. But I’ve realized that world I want is gone. The playing field is already tilted. And pretending that letting regular Americans get crushed by interest while giant financial firms live large is somehow “free market capitalism” is a joke.

Trump isn’t pushing socialism. He’s challenging a credit cartel that has made clear they only think of American households as revenue streams.

That’s long overdue and I will proudly stand with him. Finally, someone at the top is willing to stand with the little guy over corporations.