Unlike the World Cup, the CONCACAF Gold Cup often is contested by B and C teams due to vacation, injuries and youth callups.
“We have a lot of young players that need more opportunities to play real minutes," Canada coach Jesse Marsch said ahead of this year's championship of North and Central America and the Caribbean. “There’s a lot ways I think to use the tournament to broaden our player pool and to strengthen what we’re doing with our team.”
Defending champion Mexico opens the 16-nation event Saturday against the Dominican Republic in a first-round group that also includes Costa Rica and Suriname. The reeling United States, on its first four-game losing streak since 2007, starts Sunday against Trinidad and Tobago, then plays invited guest Saudi Arabia and Haiti.
Canada is grouped with Honduras, El Salvador and Curacao, and Panama is together with Jamaica, Guatemala and Guadeloupe.
“We have the obligation of being the favorites. We have to accept that title,” Javier Aguirre, hired last summer for his third stint as Mexico's coach, said through a translator.
Mexico has won nine Gold Cups, including 2023. The U.S. has won seven, including 2021, and Canada won in 2000. The tournament will be played at the same time as the Club World Cup, which has been given priority for players by FIFA.
“It’s not to say that if someone isn’t here now they won’t be here next year,” Aguirre said. “So many things can happen in a year.”
Gold Cup matches will be played at 14 stadiums in 11 areas, avoiding the Eastern seaboard. The championship is at Houston on July 6.
El Tri will be missing forwards Hirving “Chucky” Lozano and Henry Martín, who have hamstring injuries.
Canada is without star winger Alphonso Davies, who tore his right ACL during the CONCACAF Nations League third-place game against the U.S. on March 23.
The U.S. roster is notable for the missing as much as the present. The Americans are without star Christian Pulisic (wanted time off); Yunus Musah (personal reason not disclosed); Weston McKennie, Tim Weah, Gio Reyna (headed to the Club World Cup); Antonee Robinson, Tyler Adams and Folarin Balogun (injured); and Sergiño Dest (regaining fitness).
“I don’t think there’s any denying that some of our performances have fallen short over the past year to 18 months,” defender Walker Zimmerman said. “When you look at Gold Cup and you look at some players maybe having their first experience with Gold Cup or even new guys coming into the team in general, it’s always such a great opportunity to have a month in front of a staff, get a lot of quality trainings in together and find yourself hopefully getting into a rhythm of playing multiple games where you can put everything on the line to try and make a World Cup team in a year’s time.”
The U.S. has won its group in 16 of 17 Gold Cups, along with a second-place finish to Panama in 2011, and its group stage record is 40 wins, one loss and five draws.
American players are aware of the criticism of their play since the 2022 World Cup.
“What you see online, all that media, all the opinions, it’s impossible this day not to see it,” defender John Tolkin said Friday. “We have a huge opportunity right now to kind of change the narrative and, yeah, set the focus towards the World Cup coming up next summer, and that’s to win this tournament.”
AP soccer: https://apnews.com/hub/soccer
United States head coach Mauricio Pochettino looks onto the field during the first half of an international friendly soccer match against Switzerland, Tuesday, June 10, 2025, in Nashville, Tenn. (AP Photo/George Walker IV)
NEW YORK (AP) — Reviving a campaign pledge, President Donald Trump wants a one-year, 10% cap on credit card interest rates, a move that could save Americans tens of billions of dollars but drew immediate opposition from an industry that has been in his corner.
Trump was not clear in his social media post Friday night whether a cap might take effect through executive action or legislation, though one Republican senator said he had spoken with the president and would work on a bill with his “full support.” Trump said he hoped it would be in place Jan. 20, one year after he took office.
Strong opposition is certain from Wall Street in addition to the credit card companies, which donated heavily to his 2024 campaign and have supported Trump's second-term agenda. Banks are making the argument that such a plan would most hurt poor people, at a time of economic concern, by curtailing or eliminating credit lines, driving them to high-cost alternatives like payday loans or pawnshops.
“We will no longer let the American Public be ripped off by Credit Card Companies that are charging Interest Rates of 20 to 30%,” Trump wrote on his Truth Social platform.
Researchers who studied Trump’s campaign pledge after it was first announced found that Americans would save roughly $100 billion in interest a year if credit card rates were capped at 10%. The same researchers found that while the credit card industry would take a major hit, it would still be profitable, although credit card rewards and other perks might be scaled back.
About 195 million people in the United States had credit cards in 2024 and were assessed $160 billion in interest charges, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau says. Americans are now carrying more credit card debt than ever, to the tune of about $1.23 trillion, according to figures from the New York Federal Reserve for the third quarter last year.
Further, Americans are paying, on average, between 19.65% and 21.5% in interest on credit cards according to the Federal Reserve and other industry tracking sources. That has come down in the past year as the central bank lowered benchmark rates, but is near the highs since federal regulators started tracking credit card rates in the mid-1990s. That’s significantly higher than a decade ago, when the average credit card interest rate was roughly 12%.
The Republican administration has proved particularly friendly until now to the credit card industry.
Capital One got little resistance from the White House when it finalized its purchase and merger with Discover Financial in early 2025, a deal that created the nation’s largest credit card company. The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, which is largely tasked with going after credit card companies for alleged wrongdoing, has been largely nonfunctional since Trump took office.
In a joint statement, the banking industry was opposed to Trump's proposal.
“If enacted, this cap would only drive consumers toward less regulated, more costly alternatives," the American Bankers Association and allied groups said.
Bank lobbyists have long argued that lowering interest rates on their credit card products would require the banks to lend less to high-risk borrowers. When Congress enacted a cap on the fee that stores pay large banks when customers use a debit card, banks responded by removing all rewards and perks from those cards. Debit card rewards only recently have trickled back into consumers' hands. For example, United Airlines now has a debit card that gives miles with purchases.
The U.S. already places interest rate caps on some financial products and for some demographics. The Military Lending Act makes it illegal to charge active-duty service members more than 36% for any financial product. The national regulator for credit unions has capped interest rates on credit union credit cards at 18%.
Credit card companies earn three streams of revenue from their products: fees charged to merchants, fees charged to customers and the interest charged on balances. The argument from some researchers and left-leaning policymakers is that the banks earn enough revenue from merchants to keep them profitable if interest rates were capped.
"A 10% credit card interest cap would save Americans $100 billion a year without causing massive account closures, as banks claim. That’s because the few large banks that dominate the credit card market are making absolutely massive profits on customers at all income levels," said Brian Shearer, director of competition and regulatory policy at the Vanderbilt Policy Accelerator, who wrote the research on the industry's impact of Trump's proposal last year.
There are some historic examples that interest rate caps do cut off the less creditworthy to financial products because banks are not able to price risk correctly. Arkansas has a strictly enforced interest rate cap of 17% and evidence points to the poor and less creditworthy being cut out of consumer credit markets in the state. Shearer's research showed that an interest rate cap of 10% would likely result in banks lending less to those with credit scores below 600.
The White House did not respond to questions about how the president seeks to cap the rate or whether he has spoken with credit card companies about the idea.
Sen. Roger Marshall, R-Kan., who said he talked with Trump on Friday night, said the effort is meant to “lower costs for American families and to reign in greedy credit card companies who have been ripping off hardworking Americans for too long."
Legislation in both the House and the Senate would do what Trump is seeking.
Sens. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., and Josh Hawley, R-Mo., released a plan in February that would immediately cap interest rates at 10% for five years, hoping to use Trump’s campaign promise to build momentum for their measure.
Hours before Trump's post, Sanders said that the president, rather than working to cap interest rates, had taken steps to deregulate big banks that allowed them to charge much higher credit card fees.
Reps. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-N.Y., and Anna Paulina Luna, R-Fla., have proposed similar legislation. Ocasio-Cortez is a frequent political target of Trump, while Luna is a close ally of the president.
Seung Min Kim reported from West Palm Beach, Fla.
President Donald Trump arrives on Air Force One at Palm Beach International Airport, Friday, Jan. 9, 2025, in West Palm Beach, Fla. (AP Photo/Julia Demaree Nikhinson)
FILE - Visa and Mastercard credit cards are shown in Buffalo Grove, Ill., Feb. 8, 2024. (AP Photo/Nam Y. Huh, File)
