Housing prices and credit cards among Donald Trump’s concerns
With the cost of living at the top of his domestic agenda for 2026, US President Donald Trump last week unveiled a series of proposals aimed at making the cost of living for Americans less expensive. The governor focused on two major burdens: housing and credit card debts.
Trump has been very active, also floating vague ideas about reducing health insurance premiums, giving federal subsidies directly to consumers rather than to insurers, and reducing utility costs by requiring big technology companies, including Microsoft, to foot the bill for the energy consumption of their data centers, among other measures. Last month, Trump signed “most favored nation” agreements with nine drugmakers aimed at lowering drug prices in the U.S. and secured two other deals in recent days.
And, of course, he suggested using some of the increase in revenue from trade tariffs to issue refund checks for two thousand dollars (1,720 euros at current exchange rates) to Americans.
More proposals are on the way, Trump suggested in a speech in Detroit this Tuesday, billed as focusing on the economy. Over the course of the week, the US president said, a healthcare access framework will be announced that will hold insurers accountable, lower drug prices and make pricing more transparent. Trump also promised to “provide much more detail” about his housing proposals at the World Economic Forum in Davos next week, “so that every American who wants to own a home can buy one.”
It is questionable whether Trump has the authority to enact many of these proposals on his own, despite his statements on the social network Truth Social. Several experts say he needs congressional approval for at least some of the measures, which would not be easy to obtain.
Several of the ideas run counter to Republican orthodoxy and have been promoted by lawmakers he often accuses of being “radical left,” including Senators Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren and Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez.
More importantly, experts questioned whether his latest set of ideas would actually make a dent in the country’s cost-of-living crisis and help alleviate Americans’ hardships.
“Despite some real priorities from the White House, it will be a challenge to get enough traction in terms of cost of living to really change voters’ mindsets,” said Tobin Marcus, head of U.S. politics and policy at Wolfe Research, who served in the Obama administration.
Here are some of Trump’s main proposals:
Limit credit card interest rates to 10%
On Friday, Trump called for a 10% cap on credit card fees for a year, echoing a campaign promise he made in 2024. The cap would go into effect on Jan. 20, and companies that didn’t comply would be “breaking the law,” he told reporters on Sunday.
“They really abused the public,” Trump said of the credit card companies. “I won’t let that happen.”
Such a limit, however, would likely make it much more difficult for Americans with lower credit scores to get credit cards, explains Andy Laperriere, head of U.S. policy research at Piper Sandler and an economic policy adviser to former Republican House Majority Leader Dick Armey. Banks may also reduce your limits or increase your annual fees.
“The economic fundamentals of this are simply not going to work,” Laperriere told CNN, regarding the limit.
Currently, the average credit card interest rate in the U.S. is just under 20%, according to Bankrate, although some rates are much higher.
The banking industry echoed that sentiment in its response to Trump’s demand, saying such a limit would “reduce the availability of credit and be devastating for millions of American families and small business owners.”
It’s unclear what law Trump says credit card companies would violate, and it’s doubtful Trump could enact such a measure on his own, experts say. One vehicle he could try to use is the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, but it would be trying to cut off funding and weaken him.
The idea has the support of Sanders and populist Republican Sen. Josh Hawley, along with Ocasio-Cortez, a Democrat, and Republican Rep. Anna Paulina Luna, who co-sponsored legislation imposing such a cap on credit card fees. Warren said Monday that Trump called her and that she told him a rate cap could be passed “if he really fights for it.”
But Republican leaders on Capitol Hill have raised serious concerns about the impact on credit availability — with Senate Majority Leader John Thune saying Tuesday, “That’s not something I’m advocating.”
Ban large institutional investors in single-family homes
Trump said Wednesday that he is “taking immediate action” to stop large institutional investors from buying more single-family homes, calling on Congress to regulate his proposal.
Although these large investors — those who own more than a thousand properties — control more than 10% of single-family rental housing in some American markets, they represent a small percentage of the total in the US. Furthermore, they are selling their properties, not buying additional homes, as real estate is no longer as good an investment as it was in the past decade due to rising prices, says Laperriere.
Rental properties are typically owned by small landlords, not Blackstone or other investment management companies, says Marcus.
Prohibiting big investors from buying more single-family homes wouldn’t have much, if any, impact on making buying or renting housing more affordable, experts say.
Regardless, the idea has support on both sides of the political spectrum. Senate Democrats tried to restrict institutional ownership of single-family rental homes last year, and Warren has championed that move for years.
Following Trump’s announcement last week, several Republican lawmakers applauded the proposal and said they would introduce legislation.
Purchase of mortgage securities
Another way in which Trump wants to make housing more affordable is to have the federal government, through the Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac funds, which are public instruments, purchase 200 billion dollars [172 mil milhões de euros] in mortgage bonds.
“This will cause mortgage rates to fall, monthly payments to decrease and the cost of owning a home to become more affordable,” the US president posted on the social network Truth Social on Friday. “It’s one of my many measures to restore the cost of living.”
Since the announcement, mortgage rates have dropped about 0.2 percentage points, which helps but isn’t a huge change, experts say. And they may not fall much further after the bond purchases occur.
“I don’t think this is going to transform the housing market or change voters’ perceptions of housing affordability,” says Marcus.
While Trump has the authority to increase the portfolios of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, it is not a popular move among some lawmakers and experts. Furthermore, this will make it more difficult to privatize companies, as the government has been pushing to do.
Issue checks for two thousand dollars
Although he did not mention it in his speech on Tuesday, Trump also suggested sending fee refund checks worth two thousand dollars (1,720 euros at current exchange rates) to people on low and moderate incomes in order to give them a financial boost.
The idea has sparked a lot of interest among Americans, but it’s unlikely to happen for several reasons — including the fact that the federal government isn’t collecting enough tariff revenue to cover the expense, according to estimates from the Tax Foundation.
There isn’t much appetite for that among Republican lawmakers, whose support would be crucial, Laperriere says. And such a payment risks reigniting the high inflation that was sparked by the Covid-19 pandemic stimulus checks and other programs.
Trump’s cost-of-living strategy is similar to former President Joe Biden’s — attacking industries for high prices and proposing symbolic solutions, he said.
“There is no easy answer, period,” concludes Laperriere. “That’s part of the reason we’re seeing symbolic things.”
