Joe Biden makes no secret of the fact that he loves an ice-cream. Not since Tony Soprano exercised his constitutional right to “zone out in front of the TV with a sundae” after a hard day of extortion and carousing has any American public figure, real or fictive, enjoyed such a public relationship with the enduring taste of summer. In quiet moments the US president clearly still finds time to raid the White House freezer and he recently went on the record to make it clear he doesn’t like what he is seeing.
Things are shrinking in the land of plenty and for all of the intense scrutiny of the octogenarian president’s powers of observation, retention, and stamina, he has kept a boyish eye when it comes to his favourite treat. He used the Super Bowl weekend – which is essentially a national excuse to spend a Sunday evening guiltlessly pigging out on snacks – to have a cut at corporate volume cutting, “where they charge you just as much for the same size bag of potato chips, only there’s a helluva lot fewer chips in it”.
“Sports drinks bottles are smaller; a bag of chips has fewer chips but they’re still charging just as much. As an ice cream lover, what makes me most angry is that ice-cream cartons have actually shrunk in size. Some companies are trying to pull a fast one by shrinking the products little by little and hoping you won’t notice. Even as supply chains are back to normal, some companies are still not passing along the savings to their customers,” he groused.
Many moons have passed since Biden has had the time, freedom or, one imagines, inclination to go grocery shopping but his complaint was true to his common touch. His Super Bowl gripe was quickly followed by a taskforce to deal with the phenomenon of “shrinkflation”, which has risen in tandem with inflationary prices but refused to dip despite the easing of supply chain issues.
This week the president had an unlikely ally in the form of the Cookie Monster, the disconcertingly gluttonous puppet who has been messily munching cookies on Sesame Street since 1958 with little to say for himself apart from proclaiming his love of the same. In more recent years, though, the Monster has been used as a voice to promote healthy eating and his shining moment was when he recalled the “crazy times of the ‘70s and ‘80s” when, he said, he used to be “the Robert Downey jnr of cookies”.
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This week it became clear that he hasn’t entirely kicked the habit as he took to X to declare: “Me Hate Shrinkflation! Me cookies are getting smaller! Guess me going to have to eat double da cookies.” It was probably the first time that it occurred to any of his 626,000 followers that the Cookie Monster may have to buy his biscuits like any other American: he just seemed to have an infinite supply at furry paw.
Biden took a break from his weekly agenda – coping with a resurgent Donald Trump, writing his state of the union address – to, well, chip in.
“I’ll tell you what, I tell you who did notice: Cookie Monster. He pointed out cookies, or his cookies, are getting smaller, paying the same price,” the president declared. “I was stunned when I found out that’s what actually happened.”
Casual observers could be forgiven for wondering about the quality of the presidential diet at this stage. But dealing with escalating consumer costs has been part of the Biden manifesto throughout his term in office. The Shrinkflation Prevention Act was drafted to facilitate the Federal Trade Commission’s power to go after companies that engage in the practice. And high consumer costs are one of the reasons he is struggling in the polls.
The issue came up recently in an already-famous profile of Biden by Evan Osnos that appeared in the latest edition of the New Yorker magazine. Insiders and veterans proclaim the turnaround in the US economy under Biden as miraculous: the recession that never came. “The data is so good you have to rub your eyes,” Roger Altman, a Clinton administration cabinet member said in the article. He stressed that Biden needed to sell the message that, “‘We’re getting prices back down for you’. Talk about it every half hour because this grocery-price anger is a real problem”.
On a theoretical and national level, the US economy is thriving. But millions of household budgets, coping with food and energy bills that have risen by 25 per cent over the past few years, are not reflecting that. The Biden administration has implemented a series of policies to protect the consumer, from chasing exploitative credit card and air miles practices to saving people up to $20 billion (€18.3 billion) in junk fees, to approving $138 billion in student debt forgiveness for almost four million Americans. The debt forgiveness number alone is staggering: before the Biden administration, just 7,000 borrowers had been able to avail of student debt forgiveness.
The big question is whether Biden can convince millions of others that it’s the economy, stupid, in time for the election. The Cookie Monster will be fine, and he carries no vote.
“This is such an American crisis,” scoffed the Malaysian comedian Ronny Chieng during a guest slot on The Daily Show. “‘Oh no! My Costco sack of Oreos only has 15,000 instead of 16′. You know what’s not shrinkflating is celery! Maybe you should try it some time.”
Just what any president looks forward to after a gruelling day leading the country and battling for democracy is to kick off the shoes, open the fridge and soothe his worries away with a delicious crunchy stick of celery.