At Davos earlier this year, and two weeks after President Donald Trump first called for a 10% ceiling on credit card interest, Bloomberg TV asked Citadel's founder what he made of it. He focused on who would lose. "Those are people that literally start their business with their Visa card," Ken Griffin said of younger borrowers with weak credit scores, the group he argued would be the first to be cut off if the price of credit were capped by law.
On Jan. 9, 2026, Trump called for a one-year cap of 10% on credit card interest, to take effect on Jan. 20. Two bills already in Congress would make a cap last longer: S.381, sponsored by Sen. Bernie Sanders and Sen. Josh Hawley, and H.R.1944 in the House, sponsored by Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez with Rep. Anna Paulina Luna. At the end of January, PolitiFact rated the promise "Stalled," with neither bill out of committee. The Federal Reserve's G.19 release puts the average rate on card accounts that were actually charged interest at 22.15% in May 2026, the most recent reading, so a 10% ceiling would cut the price of carrying a balance by more than half.
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Griffin's argument is the standard economist's case against price ceilings, in his own terms. He called regulating the maximum rate a lender can charge the worst thing policymakers could do, and then said why. "You actually reduce the stock of credit in society, particularly to younger people who have poor credit scores or to people who've had difficult times in life," he said. A lender who cannot charge enough to cover expected losses on a risky borrower does not lend to that borrower at a lower rate. It stops lending to that borrower at all.
He was not, in the same breath, defending the companies that issue the cards. Ken Griffin turned the question toward competition. "How do we increase competition? What is it that gives a Wells Fargo or a JPMorgan or a Capital One such incredible commercial advantages that it forecloses, in a material way, new entry?" he asked. Wells Fargo (WFC), JPMorgan Chase (JPM) and Capital One (COF) are three of the largest card issuers in the country, and new entrants — including Elon Musk's X Money app — have barely dented their share. Leave that question out and a competition argument becomes a bank-friendly one, which is the opposite of what he said.
The useful test is whether Griffin's prediction matches what happened where caps already exist, and the evidence points the way he says while leaving the harder question open. Federal credit unions have lived under an 18% ceiling for decades, though it sits above today's average card rate and rarely binds, and the Military Lending Act caps most consumer credit to service members at 36%. The closest test is Illinois, which capped consumer loan rates at 36% in 2021. Economists at the Federal Reserve Board who studied that law found that the number of loans made to borrowers with subprime scores fell sharply afterward, while a separate survey-based study found that most of the affected borrowers said they were better off without the loans. Both findings can be true. A cap reliably shrinks the volume of credit extended to the riskiest borrowers. Whether that is harm or protection is where the two sides part, and no state has tried anything near 10% on cards.
Griffin's own competition premise also checks out. The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau's biennial report on the card market has repeatedly found the business highly concentrated, with the 10 largest issuers accounting for more than 80% of outstanding balances. That concentration is the strongest argument available to the cap's supporters, and it is also the thing Griffin says policymakers should attack directly instead of capping the price.
The case for the cap deserves its full length. Sanders and Hawley argue that Americans carry more than $1.2 trillion in card debt at rates that have climbed even as the Fed has cut, and a coalition of civil rights groups, unions, and veterans' organizations wrote to Congress in 2026 urging it to pass the 10% bill on the grounds that revolving debt at 22% traps exactly the borrowers Griffin says would lose access. Both claims can hold at once: Fewer cards would go to weak-score borrowers, and fewer of those borrowers would end up paying 22% on a balance they cannot clear. The group is not small; depending on the scoring model and cutoff, estimates of the share of scored adults in the subprime range run from about a quarter to more than a third. The dispute is about which outcome matters more, and arithmetic does not settle it.
Griffin's firm does not issue credit cards, and nothing in the interview points to a direct financial stake in the outcome. Eight months after Davos, the bills he was asked about have not moved, the average rate has gone up, and his argument is the one every rate cap eventually has to answer. A ceiling on the price of credit is also a ceiling on who gets it. Which of those two facts a reader cares about more is the entire debate.
On the date of publication, Caleb Naysmith did not have (either directly or indirectly) positions in any of the securities mentioned in this article. All information and data in this article is solely for informational purposes. For more information please view the Barchart Disclosure Policy here.