How would a credit card interest rate cap even work?
Marketplace Morning Report
Marketplace
4.5 • 927 Ratings
🗓️ 22 January 2026
⏱️ 7 minutes
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Summary
President Donald Trump acknowledged yesterday that he'll need help from Congress to cap credit card interest at 10%. He also talked about this at the World Economic Forum; at another Davos venue, JPMorgan Chase's Jamie Dimon said that capping cards would cause "economic disaster." We dig in. Plus, tax breaks from the "Big Beautiful Bill" should boost the economy (temporarily), and boosting Venezuela's oil production could have serious environmental impacts.
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | What will people do with a bigger tax refund? I'm David Brancaccio in Los Angeles. Here in January, the tax forms are starting to show up, 1099s, and soon the W-2s will really flow. And eventually, refunds, which are expected to go up for many, given last summer's package of spending and tax changes. This should |
| 0:21.5 | stimulate the economy initially. Here's Marketplace's Justin Ho. A lot of the perks from last year's |
| 0:27.5 | budget law are for businesses, says Ben Ayers, senior economist at Nationwide. So you have things like, |
| 0:33.6 | you know, full expensing for manufacturing expenses. We have increased deductions for interest |
| 0:40.4 | and research and development expenses. Ayr says those tax benefits are encouraging businesses to |
| 0:46.1 | spend. Slowly over the course of the year, you're going to be hearing more about many businesses |
| 0:51.1 | saying, this is a good time to expand, and we're going to make some |
| 0:54.4 | investment and probably add some more workers as well as we look out over 26. |
| 0:58.6 | Individual taxpayers are going to see some benefits, too. |
| 1:01.4 | The average refund will increase by about $800 this year, says David Kelly, chief strategist |
| 1:06.4 | at J.P. Morgan Asset Management. |
| 1:08.4 | He says the bulk of that will go to people with lower incomes |
| 1:11.0 | who are more likely to spend it. So I expect that you're going to see more spending on just basics, |
| 1:16.4 | groceries, clothing, some appliances. Kelly says he expects all of that consumer spending to push |
| 1:21.9 | up GDP in the first half of the year. But he doesn't expect a lasting impact on the economy. |
| 1:27.2 | Because we're going to find it |
| 1:27.9 | very hard to sustain that level of consumer spending that we achieved in the first half of the year. |
| 1:32.1 | So it's going to start out hot and then I think it's going to cool down a lot. |
| 1:35.8 | Meanwhile, Kelly says the Trump administration's immigration restrictions will counteract many of |
| 1:40.2 | the benefits of last year's tax law. He says those restrictions are shrinking the workforce, |
| 1:45.0 | and that can put the brakes on business spending. It means it's hard to find workers, but lots of |
| 1:50.2 | businesses who might have started up, you know, you might open a restaurant to the other side of town |
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