Affordability Wars

Zohran Mamdani, the mayor-elect of New York, met with President Donald Trump in the Oval Office today in what might have seemed like an improbable love fest. Though the 34-year-old democratic socialist and the 79-year-old Republican would seem to have nothing in common, they do share a couple of important ties. Both have called the borough of Queens home, and both were catapulted to office on the issue of affordability.  

Before the meeting, the two men traded insults, calling each other “communist” and “fascist.” Afterward, Trump said of Mamdani, “I feel very confident that he can do a very good job. I think he’s going to surprise some conservative people, actually.” Mamdani was civil, too: “It was a productive meeting based on a place of shared admiration and love, which is New York City, and the need to deliver affordability for New Yorkers,” he said. The early pundit consensus for this surprising turnabout is that Trump loves a winner. This is certainly true, but their topic of conversation also reflects the Trump administration’s recognition that rising prices have become a political burden. 

Mamdani won what’s been called “the second-hardest job in America” by relentlessly harping on the cost of living for average New Yorkers and ways to drive it down, from free buses to easing regulations on Halal food carts. Mikie Sherrill and Abigail Spanberger won gubernatorial races in New Jersey and Virginia with a similar message about taming high prices. Republicans, who swept to power in 2024 primarily out of frustration with inflation, recognize that the Democrats’ new strategy rests on a simple truth: Fairly or not, the cost of living gets blamed on whoever’s in charge. 

Or at least they should. Instead, Trump has been criticizing the Democrats’ mantra of affordability as misappropriation. “It should be our word, not theirs,” he said this week. He might have seen the Oval Office meeting as a way to reclaim the word by embracing its best-known exponent. Meanwhile, his administration is throwing out a raft of explanations for rising prices in hopes that one might work. In a live interview on Thursday at the neoclassical Andrew Mellon Auditorium in Washington, D.C., with Breitbart News, Vice President J.D. Vance cycled between denial, justification, bargaining, and blame. 

“The new buzzword, if you will, is affordability,” Breitbart’s Washington Bureau Chief Matthew Boyle said, referencing Mamdani’s campaign. “People out there feel like the economic situation isn’t that great.” He added, “Look, we’re 10 months to the day here since [Donald Trump’s second] inauguration. But they want to see more. They want to see more action. … What’s your message to those out there who feel like they haven’t seen that yet?” 

I sat in the audience and counted eight different answers from Vance, a Yale Law graduate. 

First, it’s the congressional Democrats’ fault. The government shutdown, an act of “economic terrorism,” slowed the momentum we would see now.  

Two: “We get it, and we hear you.”  

But, three, “the Biden administration put us in such a very, very tough spot.” Vance used the familiar example of high egg prices. If it went from $2 a dozen to a high of $8 during Biden’s term, he noted, that it remains at, say, $6.50 now is still a significant problem. (Explanation four. Also, egg prices are actually back to $2 a dozen, and it was primarily avian flu that drove the increase.) “And,” he added—point five—“the thing that I’d ask for the American people is a little bit of patience.” The economy wasn’t harmed over 10 months, he said; it was four years of importing foreign workers under Biden (six) that followed a 40-year policy of offshoring American jobs (seven). And finally (eight), hope is around the corner: “It’s going to take a little bit of time for every American to feel that economic boom, which we really do believe is coming.” 

To be fair, several of those answers fit into one refrain: a decades-long betrayal of the American worker is being reversed by Trump, who needs a little more time and forbearance to finish the job. But if you consider a previous response of Vance’s, there is even a ninth: There is no problem.  

A few hours before Vance’s interview, the Bureau of Labor Statistics released a long-delayed report from September that showed 119,000 new jobs—respectable growth, and more than anticipated. “If you look below the surface, I think the numbers are actually better,” Vance said. Why? Well, the Biden numbers were worse than you thought: Wage growth was eaten up by inflation (true, though you could spin that as wages keeping pace with record inflation), and because all the jobs were going to the foreign-born, “there wasn’t any job growth at all.” (False.) In that context, September’s jobs and growth in post-inflation wages aren’t just modest improvements: they’re the first real growth in years. 

The mood in the Mellon Auditorium was defiant and jubilant: Vance took the stage to a standing ovation and received applause for his immigration remarks that echoed throughout the Beaux-Arts interior. Boyle’s questions were appropriately obsequious for an editor who, apparently, Vance once urged Jeff Bezos to hire at The Washington Post.

But outside that room, Trump’s approval ratings remain as low as they’ve been, with 76 percent of respondents holding a negative view of the economy and 61 percent disapproving of the president’s economic policies, according to a recent Fox News poll. Not so long ago, another administration was trumpeting the strength of its economy, touting statistics that didn’t square with the experience of angry voters. 

That the Trump administration’s affordability problems are self-created could be considered a strength. Joe Biden didn’t have many palatable answers for a pandemic supply shock and a grinding war in Europe. But Trump could, if he chose, reverse his tariffs—which will cost the average household $1,200 this year and $1,600 the next, according to the Tax Foundation—and direct ICE to stop arresting contractors and restaurant workers without criminal records.  

Instead, Vance and Trump are staying the course. And they’re eagerly elevating Mamdani, certain that not only their base but swing voters will recoil from his socialist label and big-government policies. Maybe so. But they’re picking a politician relentlessly focused on the cost of living as their foil, while offering shifting explanations for their own performance.  

Vance did share one tidbit on Thursday: There’s a “great” new Republican health plan coming, one that is “going to get Republican and Democrat support.” (The Trump administration has made promises like this one before.) So, voters who suffered through the shutdown and are now eyeing health care premium increases need only a modicum of patience. Like that big economic boom, lower prices are just around the corner.