Days after President Trump proposed capping credit card interest rates at 10%, corporate executives warned that the policy would have wide-ranging ramifications and possibly hurt consumers if enacted.
“If it happened the way it was described, it would be dramatic,” JPMorgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon said on the company’s earnings call. JPMorgan is the nation’s top credit card issuer, handling $1.34 billion in purchase volume.
The company’s CFO, Jeremy Barnum, added that consumers would likely face service changes as a result, particularly credit card users with subprime risk profiles, who may face more financial instability.
“People will lose access to credit, like on a very, very extensive and broad basis, especially the people who need it the most, ironically,” Barnum said. “And so that’s a pretty severely negative consequence for consumers and, frankly, probably also a negative consequence for the economy as a whole right now.”
It’s unclear how Trump could implement a one-year credit card APR limit without legislation from Congress. To that end, on Tuesday, US House Speaker Mike Johnson took up the issue and said he would explore the president’s idea.
Johnson also acknowledged there could be “unintended consequences” of such a move — a sentiment echoed by Delta Air Lines CEO Ed Bastian in the company’s earnings call on Tuesday.
Delta offers a co-branded credit card with American Express (AXP) that contributes an estimated 13% of its annual revenue. The partnership continues to be a lucrative one for Delta: Delta’s revenue from the card grew 11% year over year to $8.2 billion in 2025, the company reported Tuesday.
“I think one of the big issues and challenges with the potential order is the fact that it would actually restrict the lower-end consumer from having access to any credit, not just what the interest rate they’re paying, which would upend the whole credit card industry,” Bastian said. “So from our standpoint, we’ll be working closely with American Express, but I don’t see any way we could even begin to contemplate how that would be implemented.”
