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Sep 22, 2026
Lula and Mamdani Unite on Living Costs as Critics Question the Optics
Lula and Mamdani presented their meeting as a convergence around poverty, labor conditions and the cost of urban life. Supportive accounts stressed that shared agenda, while critics focused on the leaders’ political alignment and the symbolism surrounding the visit.
Meeting ahead of the UN General Assembly, Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva and New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani framed their conversation around the pressures facing low-income residents rather than conventional diplomatic protocol.
Mamdani, who requested the meeting at Brazil’s UN ambassadorial residence, said New York’s central problem was affordability. “We live in the most expensive city in America, the third most expensive city in the world, and one in four New Yorkers lives in poverty,” he said. He also told Lula that the Brazilian president had been “a light for so many of us,” according to an account emphasizing Mamdani’s interest in Lula’s record of advocating for workers and social equality.1
Lula responded by describing his surprise at what he called New York’s “city of invisible people,” and urged Mamdani to retain the message that carried him to electoral victory. The two leaders also exchanged gifts: Lula gave the mayor a Corinthians shirt, while Mamdani offered a New York City football shirt produced by a Brooklyn family business and sold at cost as a lower-priced alternative to official merchandise.1
A more critical account portrayed the meeting as a gathering of politically aligned leaders and interpreted Lula’s wider remarks on military spending as an indirect criticism of President Donald Trump. Lula argued that countries were spending “trillions and trillions of dollars” on weapons while doing too little for education and hunger relief, adding: “Instead of preaching peace, many people are preaching war.”2
That contrast also surfaced online. Paulo Figueiredo, commenting on the gift exchange, wrote: “Campaign, look at Lula’s little present here,” suggesting he viewed the gesture through a political rather than civic lens.
3
Both accounts agree that affordability and poverty dominated the discussion. They differ over whether the meeting chiefly reflected practical solidarity on social policy or a deliberately ideological display before the UN gathering.