Last year, banks quickly raised interest rates to record levels and added new monthly fees on credit cards when a Consumer Financial Protection Bureau rule threatened a key revenue source for the industry.

Now, they’re far more reluctant to reverse those steps, even after bank trade groups succeeded in killing the CFPB rule in federal court last month.

Synchrony and Bread Financial, two of the biggest players in the business of issuing branded credit cards for the likes of Amazon, Lowe’s and Wayfair, are keeping the higher rates in place, executives said in recent conference calls.

“We feel pretty comfortable that the rule has been vacated,” Synchrony CEO Brian Doubles said on April 22. “With that said, we don’t currently have plans to roll anything back in terms of the changes that we made.”

His counterpart at Bread, CEO Ralph Andretta, echoed that sentiment, “At this point, we’re not intending to roll back those changes, and we’ve talked to the partners about that.”

The CEOs celebrated the end of a proposed CFPB regulation that was meant to limit what Americans would pay in credit card late fees, an effort that the industry called a misguided and unlawful example of regulatory overreach. Under previous Director Rohit Chopra, the CFPB estimated that its rule would save families $10 billion annually. Instead, it inadvertently saddled borrowers with higher rates and fees for receiving paper statements as credit card companies sought to offset the expected revenue hit.

Retail cards hit a record high average interest rate of 30.5% last year, according to a Bankrate survey, and rates have stayed close to those levels this year.

“The companies have made a windfall,” said David Silberman, a veteran banking attorney who lectures at Yale Law School. “They didn’t think they needed this revenue before except for [the CFPB rule], and they’re now keeping it, which is coming directly out of the consumer’s pocket.”

Synchrony and Bread both easily topped expectations for first-quarter profit, and analysts covering the companies have raised estimates for what they will earn this year, despite concerns about a looming U.S. economic slowdown.

There were more than 160 million open retail card accounts last year, the CFPB said in a report from December that highlighted risks to users of the high-interest cards.

More than half of the 100 biggest U.S. retailers offer store cards, and brands including Nordstrom and Macy’s relied on them to generate roughly 8% of gross profits in recent years, the CFPB said.

Banks may be taking advantage of the fact that some users of retail cards don’t have the credit profiles to qualify for general-purpose cards from JPMorgan Chase or American Express, for example, said senior Bankrate analyst Ted Rossman.

Nearly half of all retail card applications are submitted by people with subprime or no credit scores, and the card companies behind them approve applications at a higher rate than for general-purpose cards, the CFPB said.

“Companies like Bread or Synchrony, they rely a lot more on people who carry balances or who pay late fees,” Rossman said.

Rates on retail cards have fallen by less than 1% on average since hitting their 2024 peak, and they are typically about 10 percentage points higher than the rates for general-purpose cards, Rossman said.

That means it’s unlikely that other large players in the retail card sector, including Citigroup and Barclays, have rolled back their rate increases in the wake of the CFPB rule’s demise. The most recent published APR on the Macy’s card, issued by Citigroup, is 33.49%, for instance.

Citigroup and Barclays representatives declined to comment for this article.

Alaina Fingal, a New Orleans-based financial coach, said she often advises people who’ve been trapped in a debt spiral from using retail credit cards. Some have to take on side gigs, like driving for Uber Eats, to work down the balances, she said.

“They do not understand the terms, and there are a lot of promotional offers that may have deferred interest clauses that are in there,” Fingal said. “It’s extremely predatory.”

“The Art of the Deal” author President Donald Trump said in a surprising comment Tuesday that the United States does not need to “sign deals” with trade partners, despite top White House officials claiming for weeks that such deals are the administration’s top priority.

“Everyone says, ‘when, when, when are you going to sign deals?'” Trump grumbled during a White House meeting with Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney.

“We don’t have to sign deals, they have to sign deals with us. They want a piece of our market. We don’t want a piece of their market,” Trump said.

After weeks of touting how many countries were asking for bilateral trade talks with the United States, the president and his team have yet to announce any formal agreements or frameworks.

“I wish they’d … stop asking, how many deals are you signing this week?” said Trump, clearly frustrated at the mounting pressure on the White House to show progress on trade talks. “Because one day we’ll come and we’ll give you 100 deals,” he said.

Trump’s effort to deprioritize trade deals Tuesday marked a turn away from what his Treasury Secretary told CNBC the day before.

The U.S. is “very close to some deals,” Scott Bessent said on “Money Movers.”

Trump himself said Sunday on Air Force One that there “could very well be” trade deals rolled out this week. “At the end, I’m setting the deal,” he told reporters en route to Washington.

Speaking last week during a NewsNation town hall, Trump also said that his administration has “potential deals” with India, South Korea and Japan.

He also said last week that negotiations with India were “coming along great” and the U.S. will “likely have a deal with India.”

On Tuesday, however, Trump blamed top aides like Bessent and Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick for overpromising trade deals.

“I think my people haven’t made it clear, we will sign some deals,” said Trump. “But much bigger than that is we’re going to put down the price that people are going to have to pay to shop in the United States. Think of us as a super luxury store, a store that has the goods.”

U.S. markets moved lower Tuesday afternoon after Trump made the comments about deals.

Investors and business leaders are desperately hoping the Trump administration can negotiate a series of bilateral agreements with major U.S. trading partners like Japan, South Korea and India before the full brunt of the tariff induced trade slowdown hits the U.S. economy.

But so far, the Trump administration has not provided any details about any specific deals. Instead, nearly every day, top aides publicly claim that several deals are “close” and could be announced within days.