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By Monica Sager
Live News Reporter
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Senator Bernie Sanders, progressive independent from Vermont, said he will "absolutely" be willing to work with President-elect Donald Trump, especially if the Republican "follows through" with a proposed credit card interest rate limit.
Sanders joined The New York Times' Michael Barbaro on "The Daily" podcast Friday. Barbaro asked Sanders if there are "any areas where you are prepared to work with the President-elect." Trump had suggested during his campaigning in September that he would put a cap on credit card interest rates at 10 percent.
"If Trump, for example, follows through on his proposal to limit interest rates on credit cards to 10 percent, which is what he campaigned on, absolutely I will be there," Sanders said.
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"I think it's a very good idea. I think it's time we told the people on Wall Street they cannot charge the desperate working-class people who have a hard time paying their bills' 25, 30, 40 percent interest rates."
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The current average for credit card interest rates is 21.5 percent, according to Federal Reserve data. This is six percentage points higher than the rates were prior to the Covid-19 pandemic. Sanders called these rates "immoral."
Additionally, Americans are currently tackling $1.28 trillion in credit card debit, a $36 billion increase during the second quarter of 2024 alone.
"We're going to cap it at around 10 percent. We can't let them make 25 and 30 percent," Trump said at a Long Island, New York event in September. "While working Americans catch up, we're going to put a temporary cap on credit card interest rates."
Karoline Leavitt, a Trump campaign spokesperson, told CNN in September that Trump's proposal would "provide temporary and immediate relief for hardworking Americans who are struggling to make ends meet and cannot afford hefty interest payments on top of the skyrocketing costs of mortgages, rent, groceries and gas."
Sanders and progressive Democratic Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York have previously proposed similar ideas in Congress, but they were stalled. In 2019, the two proposed a Loan Shark Prevention Act to limit the annual percentage rate for an extension of consumer credit to 15 percent. This would create a ceiling, similar to what Trump suggested, for consumer credit products, which includes both loans and credit cards.
"The reality is that today's modern-day loan sharks are no longer lurking on street corners breaking kneecaps to collect their payments," Sanders said at the time. "They wear three-piece suits and work on Wall Street, where they make hundreds of millions in total compensation and head financial institutions like JPMorgan Chase, Citigroup, Bank of America and American Express."
Sanders, who unsuccessfully sought the Democratic party's presidential nomination in 2016 and 2020, has said since Trump's election win that Vice President Kamala Harris' defeat "should come as no great surprise" because Democrats had "abandoned working-class people."
While Sanders praised Harris for her messages on abortion rights, democracy and Trump's perceived unfitness for office, he—and other progressive critics—said the campaign fell short on bold, economic policy plans that they believe would have appealed to more working-class voters.
In August, Sanders told Newsweek that "many working-class people feel that the Democratic Party has kind of abandoned them." He had hoped at the time that Harris and her campaign would reprioritize the working-class voters.
"This is a pivotal moment in American history, and the next year or two will determine what happens in this country for decades in my view," Sanders said Friday on "The Daily."
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