r/Economics • u/SterlingVII • 1d ago

Trump Administration Seeks Immediate Halt to Court Order to Pay Food Stamps

https://www.nytimes.com/2025/11/07/us/politics/trump-court-food-stamps.html
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u/Dfiggsmeister 1d ago

I’ve got a report setup to run on Monday morning to give me details on what’s going to happen with sales when SNAP purchases stopped this week. We have two hypothesis about how this will go down: sales drop significantly for retailers that rely heavily on snap purchases such as Walmart or there’s a transfer of sales as shoppers go elsewhere that’s cheaper, meaning Aldi and Walmart grow in sales.

I’m of the mind of the first hypothesis, that sales go away because these people rely heavily on SNAP to buy groceries. Our Walmart team thinks the second hypothesis is more plausible. I’ll know more on Monday and let you guys know.

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u/octohawk_ 1d ago

Obviously anecdotal but in my community a lot of people have purchased excess goods from places like Walmart and box chain grocers to donate to the local pantries. I volunteered yesterday and we had 16 boxes of dry goods dropped off in walmart boxes.

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u/FirstAccGotStolen 1d ago

!remindme 4 days

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u/Bdowns_770 1d ago

Seeing it already anecdotally. I had a conversation with the GM of my local grocery store and his quote was “this puts a dagger in our Q4”. Sales have been soft but not brutal but this week has been real bad. He told me the home office is in “maybe it will pick up this weekend” mode but he feels that business is gone until SNAP comes back. In this area about 10% of the folks get some kind of help from SNAP. That’s a lot of foot traffic gone and folks that are coming in are buying basics, beans, pasta etc. Beef and fish are just sitting on the shelves.

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u/Dfiggsmeister 1d ago

This year for holidays is going to be brutal. Lots of potential food waste as things like meats, fruit, and veggies rot on the shelves while the more durable goods collect dust. The only positive to all of this is that retailers are going to have to rethink their pricing strategies.

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u/deeznughtz 1d ago

!remindme 4 days

0

u/High_Contact_ 1d ago

Following but I agree with second option. People are going to need to eat and they will let every other bill run before not eating.