President Donald Trump and Republicans are down in the polls with less than 10 months until the midterm elections. Now, Trump is giving the economic populism of the left a try.
Last week, Trump called for a one-year cap on credit card interest at 10%, unveiled plans to bar large private-equity funds from buying up housing and said he would bar defense companies from issuing dividends or stock buybacks. These moves check off many policy wishes of the populist progressive left and borrow from political opponents like former Vice President Kamala Harris.
It comes as Trump, who strode into a second term on a pledge to lower costs, finds himself underwater on the economy. A recent CBS News poll found that only 39% of voters approved of his performance on the issue, while 61% disapproved, one of his worst polls since retaking the presidency.
That’s a big problem for Trump and Republicans on Capitol Hill, who could lose their slim majorities in both the House and the Senate in the November elections. Democrats are pounding the administration with an election-year message centered on affordability, arguing that the president and his allies have failed to bring down costs for everyday Americans. This line of attack on the cost of goods worked well for Democrats in gubernatorial races in late 2025.
Republicans hold a razor-thin 218-213 vote majority in the House and a 53-47 seat majority in the Senate. A growing number of Republicans in the House have decided to retire at the end of this term, and Trump has warned that if Democrats take the House, “they’ll find a reason to impeach me.”
Trump’s moves appear aimed at addressing voters’ concerns around affordability — in the Truth Social post where he announced the credit card interest cap, the president wrote “AFFORDABILITY!” But not all Republicans on Capitol Hill are convinced that Trump’s populist shift represents a life raft as Democrats take a consistent lead in generic congressional ballot polling.
“Self-control, clear messaging, clear priorities would be helpful,” said Rep. Don Bacon, a Nebraska Republican who will retire at the end of this term, in an interview with CNBC. “He actually sounds more and more like a Democrat, if you think about it.”
“When you talk about limiting businesses buying houses, limiting the salaries of corporate heads, I mean, that’s much more like a Democrat messaging to me,” Bacon said.
Other Republicans were even more dismissive of the effort.
One longtime House Republican, granted anonymity to discuss Trump’s proposals candidly, said, “The kind of stuff we’re talking about right now … is called hiding from your record.”
The Trump administration is defending the president’s populist shift amid the complaints from some in the GOP.
“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,” said White House spokesperson Kush Desai. “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.”
But even top House and Senate Republicans have not exactly embraced Trump’s latest moves to lower costs for Americans, and appear to be coalescing around the message that Trump is an “ideas guy.” Trump in the past has thrown a myriad of policy proposals at the wall to see what will stick, forcing his Republican allies to quickly adjust their priorities.
“The president is the ideas guy, and what he’s doggedly determined to do, and laser-focused upon doing, is the same thing that we are, and that is reducing the cost of living,” House Speaker Mike Johnson said at a press conference on Tuesday when asked about the credit card interest cap proposal.
“I wouldn’t get too spun up about ideas that are out of the box that are proposed or suggested,” Johnson added.
Republicans have largely echoed banks in warning against a 10% cap on credit card interest, arguing such a cap could result in fewer people being offered credit and depress spending.
Trump’s credit card interest cap proposal came in a Truth Social post, hours after Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., tweeted about it. Sanders, the former presidential candidate in 2016 and 2020, has long pushed a populist economic agenda and proposed a credit card interest cap in 2019. He sponsored a bill with Sen. Josh Hawley, a Republican of Missouri with a populist streak, to impose the cap.
“Trump promised to cap credit card interest rates at 10% and stop Wall Street from getting away with murder,” Sanders wrote. “Instead, he deregulated big banks charging up to 30% interest on credit cards ……