By Matt Peterson
They say opposites attract, and two men have rarely come from more different political camps than New York City Mayor-elect Zohran Mamdani and President Donald Trump.
But on Friday in the Oval Office, a new kind of bromance was kindled.
What brought the two together was their shared love of New York City, and their intense desire to be seen as wearing the crown of affordability in front of an electorate that has turned sour on the cost of living. Despite their positions on the left and right, respectively, of U.S. politics, they share a willingness to overturn economic orthodoxy in favor of crowd-pleasing, debt-financed spending and blunt restrictions on what companies can do. That is likely to echo through U.S. markets.
In fact, the noise was ringing out even before the meeting was done. The two men agreed that New York utility Con Edison needs to lower its electricity rates, abruptly sending the company's stock negative for the day.
"Some of his ideas really are the same ideas that I have," the president said of Mamdani. The White House was denouncing Mamdani as a Communist as recently as Thursday. The mayor-elect had dubbed the president a fascist during his dynasty-toppling campaign, but declined to repeat that epithet amid the smiles and jokes in the Oval.
The cost of living is the driving force in U.S. politics today, as Democrats Joe Biden and Kamala Harris know all too well.
Mamdani has seized on that to power an improbable rise, profiting from an affiliation with socialist politics that might otherwise have held him back. And despite essentially having the opposite politics from Trump, Mamdani can claim that he has a real chance of winning over Trump voters.
"A lot of my voters actually voted for him, and I'm OK with that," Trump said Friday. Mamdani says one in 10 Trump voters in New York backed him.
That competition is likely to spur new policies aimed at helping Americans suffer through this challenging economic moment. But given the two men's instinct to spend first and ask questions later, the populist rivalry could also take a toll on the economy in the long run.
Mamdani won in New York on the message that the government needs to make it cheaper to live in the city, though like any politician he campaigned hardest on what he wants to do, rather than on what it would take to make that happen. His focus was on building affordable housing -- rather than the fact that to do so, the city would borrow so heavily that he would need to amend the state constitution to raise its debt cap.
Trump wants to claim the mantle of affordability too. "The only thing that we're going up in is our stock market," Trump said at a U.S.-Saudi investment event Wednesday.
The market has been volatile in recent trading sessions, but the S&P 500 closed up Friday, only 4.2% off its recent high. The consumer price index was at 3% in the most recent annual reading, above the Federal Reserve's 2% target but well below the 9.1% high it hit in June 2022.
Trump's instincts have prompted him to change tack on his policies recently. He slashed tariffs on imported foodstuffs such as bananas, despite the uncomfortable message that sends about what the other tariffs might be doing to prices. Trump is allowing Argentina to export more beef to the U.S. in an effort to lower grocery-store costs, despite ranchers' complaints and the huge unpopularity of the U.S. financial assistance package for that country.
And he has charged ahead with his call for $2,000 rebate checks for low- and mid-income Americans, even as his advisers suggest that it might be best to spend that money paying down debt, which is near 100% of gross domestic product. The checks would cost some $300 billion.
"If President Trump were to make this his 'hill to die on' in the coming months, he would garner sufficient support for the checks to be approved in Congress," political analyst George Pollack of research firm Signum Global Advisors writes in a client note.
And after his meeting with Mamdani, Trump just might insist on the checks. His polling on affordability is dire: 72% of adults disapproved of his handling of inflation and affordability in a Marquette Law School survey conducted last week.
Now, with Mamdani signaling to Democrats that it is possible to win not just their own voters but also Republicans with bold, unaffordable promises on the economy, Trump will be under pressure to take steps to prove to Americans that he is working to make it easier to get by.
Any way he goes is likely to be expensive.
Based on the performance at the White House Friday, one thing is clear: When Trump and Mamdani get together, capitalists should worry.
Write to Matt Peterson at matt.peterson@dowjones.com
This content was created by Barron's, which is operated by Dow Jones & Co. Barron's is published independently from Dow Jones Newswires and The Wall Street Journal.
(END) Dow Jones Newswires
November 21, 2025 16:58 ET (21:58 GMT)
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