Zohran Mamdani Wins — Why NYC’s Mayor Race Was a Referendum on Inequality | Prof G Markets

Yeah, I have a couple of slightly less Shopify-focused questions. One is, you know, I mentioned $92 billion in gross merchandise volume. You are the president of one of the largest e-commerce companies in the world. The way I see it, you kind of have like a front row seat to the consumer, or at least how the consumer is doing. based on your what you see in the data you see at shopify how is the consumer doing right now um you know we've seen inflation rising obviously the tariffs is that having any effect on consumer behavior right now well look uh for us at least consumer confidence is measured at the checkout that's what we see yeah on shopify what i can tell you is shoppers they keep buying they keep returning demand has remained resilient across pretty much every channel and every category so i can only comment what we see at shopify but if you look at gmv look at revenue growth consumers um there maybe maybe this is worth mentioning consumers are certainly being more selective they are buying from brands they love um we are very fortunate that the brands and merchants love happen to be on shopify and we've baked that into our you know our q4 outlook and it suggests that. But if you look at the Q3 numbers, it was another quarter of consistent

GMV growth by our merchant, 32%. And that was up, I think, and it was 31% in Q2. So that's nine consecutive quarters of GMV growth above 20%. I think it highlights the resilience of our merchants. I think it actually shows that there is a segment of consumers that Um, are, are still buying. They're just buying from brands they love and they're, they're being more selective about that.

100%. Thank you very much. Harley Finkelstein, president of Shopify. I really appreciate your time, Harley.

Thanks, Ed. After the break, the economic impact of the longest government shutdown in history. If you're enjoying the show, give Prof. G Markets a follow. We'll see you next time. utilizes a Yahoo Scout powered assistant to build a personalized view around exactly what you want to analyze, then syncs it with your portfolio for real-time tracking. You can compare multiple tickers, explore everything from candlesticks and line charts to fundamental data and layer in indicators like moving averages, Bollinger Bands, RSI, MACD, and more. So I'm in that space in between what I'd call your standard retail investor and a hedge fund manager. I think a lot about stocks. I spent a lot of time managing my money. I advise hedge funds. This suits me perfectly. I want something more robust, better charting, that's AI enabled, that I can ask questions, that I can create baskets of stocks.

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So here to help us unpack this shutdown, what it means, how it is affecting our economy, we are speaking with Prof G Media's very own Jessica Torloff, host of the Raging Moderates podcast. Jessie, great to have you on. Yeah, it's fabulous to be here. Thank you for the invitation. Absolutely. I love a crossover. I love going on your show. So thank you for having me on on rm yeah no it was great and scott was thrilled too like his yeah like his kids were playing nice or something out in the backyard exactly yeah maybe a little jealous perhaps always a little jealous it keeps him going though like even on book release week he can find it in himself he's like i'm number one on amazon but you're hanging out with ed without me. And that kind of burns me. So it's a good thing. Exactly. We love the FOMO. Well, we want to get your reaction to this shutdown, this record-breaking shutdown. I guess let's just start with your initial reactions. What do you make of this? Well, I think that it is incredibly sad for the United States. Obviously, people are feeling this deeply. And you called out the loss of SNAP benefits to 42 million Americans, which amounts to one in eight, which is a disheartening

number to say the least. And people, you know, you don't feel anything more intensely than when you don't have a meal to look forward to. And the heartbreaking stories that are pouring in of people waiting on food pantry lines was usually people that are on SNAP. It's a misconception that SNAP covers the entirety of their meal provisions, but it's usually that they have to be on SNAP and then also work with local food pantries to make sure that their families have enough to eat. So you're hearing absolute heartbreak from around the country as the Trump administration so far looks like they're saying that they're going to comply with a court order according to the press secretary, but Donald Trump is posting himself on Truth Social that they are not going to. So you just have people really left in limbo.

So sad day for the United States. It also doesn't feel like this is going to end anytime soon. The betting markets have it at over 50 percent odds that it goes into the back half of November. There are people who are talking about, you know, 60 days, 90 days. That feels inconceivable to me based on the level of pain that it's causing, but Democrats are also very dug in on this. And I was, I don't want to say skeptical, but based on what happened in the funding fight back in March, the first time that we did this during the second Trump administration, the Democrats folded pretty quickly. Like it was about 20 minutes before Chuck Schumer was like, actually, you know what, let's keep the government open. Let's see what it looks like, how they're actually going to run the government in Trump 2.0.

And now the answer is very clear about how Trump 2.0 is going to run the government. And it's simply not good enough, not for my party and not for the American public. And poll after poll after poll shows that this is a fight that the Democrats should have taken on because people can't have their ACA premiums going up an average of 114 percent. Some people have already seen, because the ACA exchange has opened, up to 400% increases. And you still have millions of people that are going to be thrown off Medicaid because of the big, beautiful bill. So they're blaming the Republicans, I mean, 10 to 15 points, depending on the poll.

And so Democrats feel pretty secure. For those who haven't been following that closely, could you just like, I mean, you mentioned the ACA premiums going up. Could you just spell out for us, like, what exactly is the disagreement here? And why hasn't this been resolved? So this hasn't been resolved because Washington doesn't work, which I feel like is the answer to every question that you could possibly give to a political strategist. I'm probably putting myself out of business, but if you programmed someone who looks loosely like me in these kinds of glasses, so me or. Rachel Maddow and said, what's wrong? Washington doesn't work. The Republicans have been claiming that they are putting forward a clean CR, so a clean continuing resolution to keep the government open. And that would be true if the big, beautiful bill hadn't happened. But it did happen. And that passed in May. And that totally changed the calculus of how Americans are thinking about their lives and certainly how the democratic party is thinking about a resolution to keep the government open and there were so many massive cuts that came in through the big beautiful bill democrats took a step back and they thought we're in the minority right of absolutely no

institutional control how can we possibly leverage what little power we have to affect the most change and so they zeroed in on health care which has typically been the issue that democrats have done better on. We lost a lot of ground over the years in terms of who's better trusted on the economy, immigration, crime and policing, all these very important issues, but always remained ahead on health care due in part to having passed the Affordable Care Act under Obama, but also the Republicans' refusal to even put forward a bill themselves. You know, they're still in the quote concepts of a plan phase. So Democrats basically dug in and they said, if you are not even going to have a conversation with us that would mean that we would include restoring the Medicaid cuts, which happened in the big, beautiful bill, and making sure that we do something about these ACA premium increases, which are going to go up astronomically in a matter of months, then we can, in good conscience, fund the government.

I think that Republicans thought that Democrats would balk, a la March, and I think that they also thought that the American public wouldn't be so animated about it. But that has not been the case. So while the shutdown has been going on, Democrats have creeped up in their advantage on the generic ballot. It's eight points now in the NBC poll. It was only one point in March. So that could spell a quote unquote blue wave is what you call it. But on top of it, you would see even today there was reporting that in the Senate GOP lunch that members were saying very loudly to Senator Thune, the majority leader, that they want to at least have a GOP bill on funding the Obamacare subsidies so they can at least show the American public that they're trying to do something without being forced to either take on a Democratic written bill or even a bipartisan bill.

they are hearing it at home. If they do town halls, they're hearing it there. They're also seeing it in public opinion. How do you think this will all shake out in the end? I mean, I looked back at like 2018 and reminded myself that actually Trump capitulated when we had the 35-day shutdown. And, you know, it was a loss for him. And so part of me says, oh, maybe the same thing will happen. But I don't know, maybe 2025 is different. Maybe he's going to continue to dig in and maybe the Democrats will continue to dig in as well. How do you think it all shakes out? How does this end? Well, my hope is, and there have been signals from senators on both sides of the aisle, so Senator Thune and then also Dick Durbin on the Democratic side, that they could be nearing some short-term proposal that would include a deal on the Obamacare subsidies.

If you really got people, you know, off the record, they would say undoing the Medicaid cuts from the big, beautiful bill is really off the table. But we should do something about these Obamacare premiums because they affect Republican voters more than Democratic voters. So 21 million of the 24 million people that are going to be affected are in red states. So I think that a mini deal, like a stopgap solution that involves negotiation over that is the most feasible way out of this. But, you know, the pressure is really going to be stepped up because I don't know if you saw ABC is reporting that the transportation department is saying that they might have to close some of U.S. airspace because of air traffic control shortages of the 1.4 million workers that are furloughed.

That's everything from our national parks to our veterans affairs. Snap benefits not coming through. Also money for Head Start programs. Like these are all things that really touch people's daily lives. And that drumbeat will get louder and louder and become unsustainable. Yeah. So I would say we're approaching it being unsustainable, but not quite there yet. I think a lot of Americans, if you're not on Snap, for example, you're probably not really feeling this, but eventually we'll get there if this goes on. I mean, you said back of November. Ultimately, who is going to be to blame? I mean, this is sort of the classic question.

if you're experiencing air traffic control shortages so you can't make your flight to get to your business meeting or whatever it is, do you blame the Democrats or you do? Or do you blame the Republicans? What is the consensus, do you think? I think the consensus is that you blame the people who are in charge. And that's the blessing and the curse of actually winning elections, right? You get to effectuate your agenda. But also when something bad happens, the buck stops with you. And the reality is, is that the big, beautiful bill cuts $186 billion out of the SNAP program. And in 2018, with the 35-day shutdown, Trump made sure that people got their SNAP benefits.

So they're not being honest in terms of what they can do with funds that have already been appropriated, that actually wouldn't be affected by a government shutdown. And I think the American public is smart enough to know these things. I also think that there are two plot line or subplot lines that are going on that are sending a really bad signal to the American public about how Trump is running this government and what he thinks of the average American. The first is the continued construction of the ballroom, the 90,000 square foot ballroom that's replacing the East Wing. So, you know, we could talk about history and how ridiculous this is and that it's not like a basketball court or it's nothing like, you know, building the West Wing or whatever.

But the point is, is that while American workers are furloughed going without food, he can pay a construction crew to do this. And I know a lot of that is coming in from his donors and things like that, but it's still very bad optics. The visual stance, yeah. Terrible. And then it's even worse to see the Great Gatsby-themed party at Mar-a-Lago from over the weekend, which even had, you know, a girl in a martini glass. And it's a, you know, a very on-the-nose encapsulation of let them eat cake. And I know that Trump is YOLOing him, you know, through the second administration, basically. But I think it's a pretty big middle finger to the people, especially his own voters that are waiting in food pantry lines to say, like, not only do I not care, I'm going to party while this was going on.

I thought it was even suspect to go to Asia while the government was shut down. All right. Well, we will be monitoring this closely. Jessica Torloff, co-host of the Raging Moderates podcast. Really appreciate your time. Thanks very much, Jessica. Thank you. We're recording this on Tuesday night, and at the time of this recording, the results of the New York City mayoral election on not out yet. However, by the time this is published in the morning, the results likely will be. And according to most polls, as well as the prediction markets, the winner will be Zohran Mamdani. Now, this is a markets podcast. It's not a politics podcast. Our job is to talk about money and stocks and finance and economics. But it would be completely obtuse not to acknowledge the myriad ways in which all of these topics are influenced by politics, whether we're talking about inflation or big tech or housing, all of these things are inherently interconnected with what is happening in the political world. Politics drives policy, policy drives economics, and economics drive politics. You cannot divorce these things from one another. And no, you cannot talk about markets without talking about Trump. You can pretend he doesn't exist. You can pretend Wall Street has nothing to do with

Washington, but we're not in the business of pretension. We are here to tell it like it is. And I'm sorry, but the reality is if you care about markets, well, by definition, you must care about politics too. So this brings us back to the new mayor of New York City or the new likely mayor of New York City, Zohran Mamdani. Will his mayoralty move markets? Probably not. Remember, New York City is a city. The extent to which one mayor can impact an economy and even a market is very limited. His job is confined to New York. It's to keep New York's trains running on time. It's to help with New York's housing, New York's public schools. This is not a market-moving level of executive power. What could move markets, however, is what this election says. Because as everyone is acutely aware of at this point, Zohran Mamdani is a democratic socialist.

And regardless of how you even define that term, the point is, this is something different from capitalism, which is important.

Okay, that's it for today. This episode was produced by Claire Miller, edited by Joel Patterson and engineered by Benjamin Spencer. Our associate producer is Alison Weiss. Our research team is Dan Chalane, Isabella Kinsel, Chris O'Donoghue and Mia Silverio. And our technical director is Drew Burrows. Thank you for listening to Prof G Markets