When government caps prices, markets don’t cooperate — they adapt

President Donald Trump has proposed capping credit card interest rates at 10%. The idea is politically appealing:
credit card rates are high, consumer debt is rising, and many households are struggling.

But history — and basic economics — suggest that price controls rarely deliver the outcomes politicians promise.
This proposal is a textbook example of the law of unintended consequences.

We’ve seen this before: Nixon’s wage and price controls

In 1971, Republican President Richard Nixon imposed sweeping wage and price controls across the U.S. economy.
The goal was to curb inflation and protect consumers.

What followed was not stability, but predictable disruptions:

• Supply shortages
• Distorted markets
• Reduced investment
• Long-term inflationary pressure

The controls temporarily hid inflation, but they broke the price signals that allow markets to function.
When the controls were lifted, inflation surged again. Price controls didn’t fix the problem — they often
delay and magnify it.

Credit card rate caps follow the same pattern

Capping credit card APRs at 10% doesn’t eliminate risk. It reallocates it.
In practice, hard caps tend to produce predictable outcomes:

• Lenders reduce access to credit for higher-risk borrowers
• Credit limits shrink
• Fees rise in other areas
• Consumers are pushed toward worse alternatives (including payday lending or informal debt)

The credit market doesn’t disappear. It reshapes itself around the regulation — often leaving the most vulnerable
consumers worse off. That’s the law of unintended consequences in action.

Price controls are not free-market solutions

Government-mandated price caps are not free-market policies. They are centralized economic control —
no different in principle from rent control, wage controls, or energy price caps.

Republicans once claimed to stand for limited government and market solutions. Nixon abandoned those principles in the 1970s.
Today, similar thinking is returning — not just from Democrats, but from Republicans and others who claim to support markets
until those markets become politically inconvenient.

Why this matters to people who actually believe in limited government

If you believe government should not set prices, and that economic freedom is inseparable from personal liberty,
then neither major party consistently represents those values.

One party favors regulation openly. The other embraces it selectively — while still claiming to oppose big government.
That contradiction is exactly why the Libertarian Party exists.

The libertarian answer isn’t flashy — but it works

Libertarians don’t promise easy fixes. We recognize that incentives matter, that price controls distort markets,
and that risk cannot be regulated out of existence. Freedom includes the freedom to make economic choices —
and to live with the real-world consequences of policy decisions.

Final thought

A 10% credit card interest cap may sound compassionate, just as wage and price controls did in 1971.
But good intentions do not repeal economic laws.

If you’re frustrated watching both major parties abandon limited government whenever it becomes inconvenient —
and if you believe freedom should apply to markets as well as speech and personal choice —
there is a political home that still takes those principles seriously.