Mamdani says he personally struck deal with Trump to delay SNAP cuts for NYC bodegas

We are together to announce a victory on behalf of working people and small business owners both here in our city and across the country. I've spoken to President Trump and Secretary Rollins, and as a result of those conversations, the President has agreed to give small business owners at least a 90-day extension to comply with a rule that would have affected tens of thousands of SNAP accepting grocery stores and bodegas nationwide. That extension starts today. Now, for the past two months, thousands of New Yorkers have been living under a cloud of stress and anxiety. On September 4th, the USDA issued guidance on new rules dictating what retailers had to stock in order to maintain SNAP authorization. These were significantly expanded standards, mandating that retail locations include seven varieties of food in four different categories, dairy, grains, proteins, and fruits and vegetables. For corporate grocery giants, these requirements posed little challenge. But the story was different for our neighborhood corner stores and bodegas. Many New Yorkers use their SNAP benefits at the bodegas that line our streets and sit at the corners of our intersections, the beating hearts of so many of our neighborhoods. And on September 4th, the USDA said that if small businesses did not meet these new standards by November 4th, they would lose their ability to accept SNAP. In a moment, the lives of more than a million New Yorkers and tens of millions more across America were thrown into chaos. Working people already reckoning with a shortage of affordable places to buy whatever it is they needed for their home, soaring costs at the register and food deserts across the five boroughs now feared that the few local places they could shop would no longer be able to accept their benefits. And as small business owners struggle to meet these new requirements in an impossibly short time frame, they knew that if they could no longer accept SNAP, they would have to turn away many of their customers and face the possibility of going out of business. As Bodega organizations will tell you, SNAP purchases account for up to roughly 15% to 20% of a typical store's sales. In the Bronx, that figure can rise as high as 30%. These concerns were not limited to our city. They extended across our country, where working people have seen their benefits eroded, where it has grown harder and harder to keep a small business running, let alone profitable, and where so many of our fellow Americans, whether they shop at a general store in Michigan or a convenience store in Missouri, would have struggled to use their benefits and feed those they love. Here at City Hall, more than a hundred bodegas reached out to request more time to meet these requirements. We organized several roundtables at City Hall with business leaders to discuss this very issue. Most recently, just two weeks ago, we convened city agencies to discuss the impact of this rule. We produced informational materials to support our small businesses, even as we pushed up against it. And I've always believed that a critical part of this job. is raising the concerns of the smallest businesses to the highest levels of government. So we formally raised those requests to the federal government, and I personally escalated them directly to President Trump. As a result of this extension, tens of thousands of small businesses across our city and across our nation will now have at least three more months to meet this new guidance. Three more months to procure goods, to establish relationships with purveyors, and to come into compliance.