The News
President Donald Trump is turning to the US economy as the midterm campaign season gets closer — except he hasn’t bothered to bring along the Republican lawmakers whose help he needs.
After weeks of focus on foreign policy, Trump’s spent the last several days launching a series of populist proposals that amount to a frontal attack on corporate America as the White House pushes to retain voters’ trust on the economy. He’s proposed stopping institutional investors from buying single-family homes; capping credit card interest rates at 10%; and forcing competition to lower credit card swipe fees.
Trump’s Federal Housing Finance Agency moved to buy $200 billion in mortgage bonds in an effort to lower borrowing costs. His Justice Department opened a perjury investigation into Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell after the central banker refused to slash interest rates.
But many in the House and Senate GOP, whose support he needs to make good on many of those plans, aren’t sold on Trump’s ideas. It risks leaving Trump with little but messaging to show for his push and less political capital with an increasingly fractious Republican Congress.
“Congress has been in a mode of, ‘Sit back and cheer Trump on,’” said Sen. Josh Hawley, R-Mo., but now “we’re at the point where it’s like, ‘Well, actually, if you want these things done, Congress is going to actually have to legislate.’”
Hawley, in fact, is the rare Republican who’s backed the credit card and housing proposals — and wants Trump to go even further on the latter by allowing Americans to tap their 401(k)s for down payments.
Other GOP lawmakers on both sides of the Capitol said they were “blindsided” by the credit card and housing ideas, which will require legislation to enact, and have heard little since about any White House plan to get them across the finish line.
There’s also an open Republican rebellion against Trump’s Powell investigation, which could easily hold up his push to confirm a new Fed chair.
GOP leaders, who were otherwise moving to rapidly roll back regulations on its now-agitated allies in the private sector, would much rather talk about the tax cuts they’ve already enacted.
In quick succession Tuesday, House Speaker Mike Johnson and Senate Majority Leader John Thune panned the idea of capping credit card interest. Johnson called it something Trump “had probably not thought through.” He and Thune both repeated Wall Street’s argument that capping rates could restrict access to credit.
The rate cap “is ridiculous, as is the housing thing,” one congressional Republican told Semafor. And “there’s so much of it, it just gets kind of lost.”
“So, whatever, we keep our heads down. We keep marching forward. We got banking legislation, we got housing legislation that is real,” the Republican added. “Let him say whatever he wants.”
Another GOP lawmaker told Semafor that the flurry of proposals from Trump is a recognition that his advisers’ push to focus on affordability is breaking through his focus on foreign policy. But their approach has been too scattershot to catch on in an organized way on Capitol Hill and needs to be refined, the second Republican said.
“President Trump was given a resounding mandate by the American people to smash Washington, DC’s obsession with consensus orthodoxy that has let Americans down,” White House spokesperson Kush Desai said.
“The Trump administration is turning the page on Joe Biden’s economic disaster by implementing traditional free market policies that do work — like deregulation and tax cuts — while rectifying the America Last policies that have Americans behind.”
Know More
Trump on Tuesday attempted to reconcile his recent foray into economic populism with the GOP’s deregulatory track record, pledging at the Economic Club of Detroit to “cut 10 old regulations for every one new regulation.”
He dug in on capping credit card interest and shutting institutional investors out of housing. He alternately teased “even more plans to help bring back affordability” even while dismissing it as “a fake word by Democrats.”
Those plans include a new “health care affordability framework” he said he plans to unveil this week. Yet Trump lent little help to a negotiating group of senators trying to revive expired health care subsidies; a finished product is now delayed until later this month, said Sen. Bernie Moreno, R-Ohio.
Trump did not mention credit card swipe fees in Detroit, despite posting Tuesday on social media about a bill curtailing them from Sen. Roger Marshall, R-Kan.
In another sign of the long road ahead for Trump’s ideas, Marshall told Semafor he’s unsure of the next steps for his legislation.
Still, he argued that 3% swipe fees “are an inflation multiplier” by increasing already-high prices and said he “think[s] that’ll be part of it” when he makes his bill pitch to Trump.
Wall Street’s most vocal allies on the Hill — including Sen. Thom Tillis, R-N.C. — are more direct in raising questions about Trump’s ideas. Other Republicans, though they likely share those concerns, tend to be more diplomatic by emphasizing other legislation, like the party’s recently enacted megabill.
Republicans’ tax cut law “was all designed to put more money in [consumers’] pockets,” said Sen. Mike Rounds, R-S.D. “Whether you’re talking about no tax on Social Security, no tax on tips — I mean, those are our big deals, and that’s exactly what the president’s working on.”
Sen. Katie Britt, R-Ala., who chairs the Senate’s housing subcommittee, called last year’s tax cuts “the first step” in improving affordability, while Trump’s most recent ideas are “yet another layer to it.”
“We’re going to have to take a comprehensive approach to be able to actually tackle that,” Britt added, touting the Senate’s bipartisan housing package and saying she’s open to other approaches.
The View From Democrats
The opposition is skeptical that Trump is willing to do the legwork required — including building a bipartisan consensus — to get his ideas across the finish line.
That includes Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., whom Trump cold-called to talk about interest rates Monday after she gave a speech on bringing down costs.
“He’s raised these issues before, but he hasn’t lifted a finger to make any of them pass,” Warren told Semafor afterward. “The question is not, ‘Can we get more talk?’ The question is whether we can get some action.”
Room for Disagreement
Marshall’s Credit Card Competition Act — which Vice President JD Vance endorsed as a senator before privately backing away — hadn’t even been reintroduced until Tuesday.
But it’s not out of the question that lawmakers could pass it this Congress, especially after Thune said Tuesday he expects a vote eventually.
As for the rest, simply floating this week’s ideas has been enough to give Wall Street serious heartburn.
“Trump has enormous sway with Republicans,” one banking lobbyist said. “A tweet from him is more powerful than a thousand [legislative] staff meetings under another president.”
Eleanor and Burgess’ View
We’ve talked a lot this month already about how different the 2026 Republican Congress is from the more pliantly pro-Trump 2025 edition. Here’s a new thought: It might not matter if none of what Trump is talking about materializes.
Just talking about his populist proposals before audiences where they’re popular (i.e. not K Street) could be enough to help battleground-seat Republicans move the needle on the campaign trail.
“That’s sort of the populist-politics game that they play, right? It’s not really about the substance,” said Norbert Michel, director of the Cato Institute’s Center for Monetary and Financial Alternatives.
“Nobody’s going to even know what the details would be or could be. They’re just going to be like, ‘Yeah, they’re fighting against Wall Street.’”
Notable
- JPMorgan’s chief financial officer said “everything is on the table” as banks fight back against a cap on credit card interest rates, Bloomberg reports.
- The administration plans to send a trio of administration officials to Ohio and Michigan later this week to talk about car affordability, an administration official told Semafor.