White House Says Banks Could Offer New Kind of Credit Cards

White House National Economic Council Director Kevin Hassett said Friday (Jan. 16) that he expects big banks to offer “great new Trump cards.”

Speaking on Fox Business, and asked about President Donald Trump’s proposed 10% credit card rate cap, Hassett said that the ideas come up in White House conversations with bank CEOs.

“We’ve been in conversations with the big banks, with CEOs of many of the big banks, who think that the president is on to something, that he’s got a great idea that they could potentially voluntarily provide for people who are in that sort of sweet spot of not having financial leverage very much because they don’t have access to credit, but they have enough income and stability in their lives so that they’re worthy of credit, and so our expectation is that it won’t necessarily require legislation because there will be really great new Trump cards presented for folks that are voluntarily provided by the banks,” Hassett said.

Trump called for a one-year, 10% cap on credit card interest rates in a Jan. 9 post on Truth Social. He said his call for lower rates was “effective January 20,” the one-year anniversary of his inauguration.

“Please be informed that we will no longer let the American Public be ‘ripped off’ by Credit Card Companies that are charging Interest Rates of 20 to 30%, and even more,” the president wrote in his post.

The proposal drew criticism from a collection of industry groups, including the Bank Policy Institute, American Bankers Association, Consumer Bankers Association, Financial Services Forum and Independent Community Bankers of America.

“We share the President’s goal of helping Americans access more affordable credit,” the groups said in a statement provided to PYMNTS.

It was reported Tuesday (Jan. 13) that JPMorgan Chase Chief Financial Officer Jeremy Barnum said the banking industry could fight proposed credit card price caps.

“If you wind up with weakly supported directives to radically change our business that aren’t justified, you have to assume that everything’s on the table,” Barnum said during a call with reporters to discuss the bank’s earnings. “We owe that to shareholders.”