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President Donald Trump has been making inroads with progressive Democrats to discuss affordability, courting an unlikely ally along the way in his pursuit of capping credit card interest rates.
Trump and Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., appeared to have briefly warmed their chilly relationship to discuss affordability issues in the country and have found a middle ground in the president’s desire to cap credit card interest rates at 10% for one year.
Warren told Fox News Digital that Trump picked up the phone and called her on Monday shortly after she gave a fiery speech centered on affordability, where she slammed the president’s efforts on the matter. During the call, the two agreed on the credit card issue, one that she’s backed for years, she said.
“I supported it for years,” Warren said, “and when he first floated the idea over a year ago, I said, ‘I’m all in,’ and so far, Trump hasn’t done anything.”
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When asked about Trump’s call with Warren and other recent moves to work with left-wing politicians on the economy, the White House told Fox Digital that Trump is smashing the district’s “obsession with consensus orthodoxy.”
“President Trump was given a resounding mandate by the American people to smash Washington, D.C.’s obsession with consensus orthodoxy that has let Americans down,” White House spokesman 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.”
A White House official described the president’s call with Warren as “productive” and focusing on credit card interest rates and affordability.
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But getting Senate Republicans on board is another matter, given their disdain for any legislation remotely related to price controls. When asked if she believed Republicans might support that push, Warren wasn’t as optimistic.
“Well, if they do, they’ve kept it well hidden,” she said.
Senate Majority Leader John Thune, R-S.D., quickly threw cold water on the idea, but noted that Sens. Josh Hawley, R-Mo., and Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., already had legislation in the works to cap credit card interest rates.
“I think… that would probably deprive an awful lot of people of access to credit around the country. Credit cards will probably become debit cards,” Thune said. “So, yeah, I mean, that’s not something I’m out there advocating for.”
There’s also a long-simmering push from Sens. Roger Marshall, R-Kan., and Dick Durbin, D-Ill., to boost competition among credit card payment networks that Trump endorsed late Monday night.
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A source familiar told Fox News Digital on Tuesday that the duo planned to reintroduce that bill, which first saw the light of day in 2023.
The call with Warren is just the latest of Trump welcoming left-wing Democrats to the affordability table or embracing policy ideas that overlap with Democratic critiques of the economy.
Newly-minted New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani, whom Trump had described as a “communist,” visited the White House in a warm meeting in November, when the pair discussed lowering costs and improving affordability for citizens, telling the media they share a vision on lowering the cost of living.
“When we spoke to those voters who voted for President Trump, we heard them speak about cost of living. We focused on that same cost of living. And that’s where I am really looking forward to delivering for New Yorkers, in partnership with the president, on the affordability agenda,” Mamdani said from the Oval Office.
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Trump leaned into publicly promoting “affordability” in the late half of 2025, as Democrats in a handful of high-profile elections last off-year cycle centered their campaigns on lowering high prices they tied to the Trump administration. The three races, which included the New York City mayoral election and gubernatorial elections in New Jersey and Virginia, all handed Democrats wins over their GOP challengers.
The president railed that Democrats promoting affordability was a “con job,” noting that he inherited sky-high inflation caused by Democratic policies under the Biden administration.
“You just say it. Affordability. I inherited the worst inflation in history. There was no affordability. Nobody could afford anything. The prices were massively high,” Trump said in December during his administration’s final Cabinet meeting for 2025.
Instead, he has argued that affordability “should be our word, not theirs.”
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Trump’s first term in the Oval Office was seen as an economic success as the unemployment rate hit 50-year lows and inflation remained tame until the pandemic hit in 2020. The president traveled to Pennsylvania in December to champion his track record on the economy and preview his vision for the future.
In recent months, the White House has touted a bevy of actions Trump has taken to ease the financial burden on Americans, including rolling out a housing-cost push that directed Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac to buy $200 billion in mortgage-backed securities to try to push mortgage rates down and make homeownership more affordable.
Separately, Trump has floated policy proposals he’s pitching as affordability fixes — including saying he’s taking steps to ban large institutional investors from buying additional single-family homes, an approach that overlaps with ideas Democrats have pursued through legislation aimed at curbing hedge fund and private equity ownership in the housing market.
Trump is set to visit Michigan on Tuesday to promote manufacturing in the Rust Belt state.
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