The shutdown will halt about $8 billion a month in federal food assistance. Walmart captures 24% of all SNAP shopper spending, according to Numerator’s 2025 SNAP Evolution report—triple Kroger’s share and far ahead of Costco, Amazon and Sam’s Club.
Walmart was the first retailer to accept SNAP online in all 50 states in 2023 and launched the Walmart+ Assist program, which offers half-price memberships for those receiving aid.
“If SNAP payments stop, spending by the lowest income groups will fall,” said Neil Saunders, managing director of data and analytics firm GlobalData. “Walmart gets a plurality of the spending, so it will be hit the hardest.”
This was somewhat epiphanic for me.
I already recognized companies such as Walmart were subsidizing pay through social programs such as SNAP and essential funneling/laundering tax payer money to their executives.
This headline made me further realize they’re not only making taxpayers subsidize wages, they’ve also effectively turned the USD into a form of company scrip. While that scrip can be spent at some other locations I bet a large percent of funneled right back to e.g. Walmart itself. If you already work at Walmart it makes spending your SNAP benefit there easier.
This is the only good news from trump’s term. The waltons losing money in this way exposes who they are, and might piss them off enough to do something.
He’s saving them so much in taxes that they can just lose $2 billion and be fine with it. The Walton family is worth almost $500 billion. They don’t give a fuck about this.
Waltons only own 45% of walmart now. There are a lot of non-billionaires that will be pretty pissed if the stock slumps. But many of those will just be regular joes, not the rich folk who have divested and planned ahead.
If a rational person was in their situation, they would see the benefit of taking the loss and making it back. But I don’t know if you become a billionaire by having a healthy relationship with money.
The waltons losing money in this way exposes who they are, and might piss them off enough to do something.
As much as I hate the idea of corporate interests having that much influence over the government (any government), someone richer than him complaining could be the only thing that gets through Trump’s mushy head.
Oh no. Not Walmart. Leave it to America to be more concerned about the shareholders and not the people within the borders.
We can be concerned about both things equally, can’t we?
Edit I used the word “concerned” because I was responding to the comment above me and he said “concerned”. “Interested” would be a more suitable word because this is an interesting topic. We’re interested that Walmart is taking a hit and we’re also interested that snap people are taking a hit. It’s interesting. Tragic for the snap people but interesting for the demise of walmart.
Nah. Having seen small towns crushed when Walmart comes in and all the mom & pop shops close. So then your options to shop are Walmart or Amazon or drive to the next town. Fuck em.
Why would anyone avoid their local Walmart just to drive to the next town to use their Walmart?..
Can’t get in the car and say “no, not that one. Let’s go the nice one”if you don’t put in the work.
Why are you as equally worried about Walmart shareholders as you are starving people?
Equally would be tough for me. The cutting shifts of the workers will suck though. That’s near $ billion that doesn’t need to be shelved and onwards. (Possibly ordered).
Well shit, the dumbasses guzzled down the orange Kool-Aid. Zero sympathy and f-them.
Doesn’t their CEO make more than that in a year? I’m sure they can pitch in during these tough times.
Walmart saves money by not paying a livable wage, they save money by not paying taxes, they receive money from the taxpayers who paid into snap. No wonder why they keep making profits year after year.
Yes millions of people can’t access food, but have you thought about the impact this is having on Walmart’s profits?
Walmart gets it both ways. They get to under pay full time employees to the point they are eligible for snap, then they make money when people use snap in their stores.
The American taxpayers are basically subsidizing Walmart.
I never considered the second point. Holy hell US lawmakers are captured by special interests
And yet no one is EVER happy to be there
Sounds like the waltons are getting it 3 ways then, since they seem the types to enjoy just the misery of it all.
True sociopaths in every sense of the word
I think its important for people to know there are consequences for supporting fascism. Walmart has been donating to conservative PACs for decades and the Waltons themselves tilt even harder than the company.
I don’t disagree, it’s just so fucking frustrating that people can scream from the rooftops for months/years that “this is bad, bad things will happen” and people will ignore them until it affects them personally or it affects a company’s profits.
The problem is all the people starving, not Walmart losing less than 1% of their profits. But apparently that less than 1% profit loss is what people listen to. It’s disgusting.
Oh, would you prefer to ignore the blatant corruption? … If minimum wage (Walmart wage) were living wage, far fewer people would be on food stamps.
That is not what I said at all and off topic from the discussion.
I’m sure they’ll just get a handout directly from the government instead.
“Our profits are in the RED, pls give money daddy govt 🥺🥺” but also somehow still makes record-breaking profits.
Remember kids, when a company says their profits are in the red, that does not mean they are losing money - THEY STILL MADE A PROFIT. Just not as much profit as last year.
One point would be WalMart has 2B in lobby money to make it stop
Maybe thisnmeans something might get done about all this.
Walmart gets financed via gov SNAP on two fronts - they sell stuff (for profit) for gov SNAPs, & their employees’ wages have to get subsidized by gov SNAP (for their profit).
Also only the stores net 20bn a year to the family (& other shareholders), so it’s a shame we are talking about them losing 2bn (over two full months) and not their full-time workers going hungry.
Also the SNAP program is 100bn annually (for 40m people) & 25bn~28bn of it gets spent in Walmart stores (their total revenue is about 680bn & they employ 2m underpaid workers).
Here is a perhaps more informative link:
https://www.newsweek.com/walmart-set-to-lose-billions-from-snap-benefits-stopping-in-november-10945862Tbh the vast majority of people that work at walmart are probably paid above SNAP qualifying wages, unless someone has kids and their spouse doesnt work or is severely underpaid. When I worked for walmart stocking shelves they were paying $18.75 in that market. Daytime people made like $17.25 without the overnight differential. That is well over the limit to get SNAP for a single person. Plus they do offer pretty good benefits, and gave accrued PTO. And a humane break system that is standardized even in states where they dont have to offer it. I realize they dont pay as much in other markets, but they are generally above the average starting wage in any given area.
Most smaller companies I ever worked for were significantly shittier in how they treated/paid workers than Walmart is. Walmart is honestly too soul crushing of a place to work; without them offering half decent shit to work there literally nobody would
Yeah, that sounds about right.
I only found this 2020 paper (but includes medicare too): https://www.gao.gov/assets/d2145.pdf
And that statistics of 15k employees in 9 of the States.
That makes sense. Based on the numbers there they average 1%-3% of their employees on SNAP in any given state. They legitimately arent paying people SNAP wages as many seem to believe
That’s an aspect of social security nets that’s rarely talked about: They stabilize domestic demand and thereby the local economy.
Food assistance programs are a huge subsidy/bailout program for big ag.
I think it does get talked about plenty. But not to the people that need to hear and understand it. You certainly won’t hear about it on Fox News or Truth Social.
Maybe it is different in the USA. I’m German. There’s plenty of people here who can explain to you why social security is good ethically, but you have to search long and hard for somebody who is able to explain some of the reasons it’s also the smart choice economically, let alone media who will let them finish their sentence.
I pay attention to more liberal/educational media sources. This sort of subject is pretty common on, for example, National Public Radio (NPR). I’m pretty sure their popular series, Planet Money, has covered SNAP and other social support programs multiple times. I mean, just as an example: https://www.npr.org/2021/03/26/981686254/socialism-101
This sort of thing is why the Trump administration immediately pulled funding for public radio and television in the US. Can’t have people learning things that contradict their propaganda.
CEOs should do to Trump what the Roman senators did to Julius Caesar.
I would not be surprised to read a headline soon stating “Walmart to receive government subsidies for lost SNAP revenue.”
Regardless if SNAP has been funded.
So the federal government subsidizes not only Walmart employee wages, but Walmarts grocery sales too? And Mamdani is apparently crazy for saying New York should run its own grocery stores that actually benefit the community instead of making the Walton family richer.
Wait, I wonder, who was funding that message 🤔
Alice Walton, the world’s richest woman, listed her address as a post office box in Bentonville, Arkansas — Walmart’s hometown — when she made a $100,000 donation in August, on top of a $100,000 donation in April. Walton has little history of political giving in New York, beyond donating to pro-charter school groups and candidates. Mamdani has said he opposes the expansion of charter schools.
Is that the bitch that has gotten off scot free with literally hundreds of DUIs?
She was one of the first to bitch openly that tariffs means higher cost.
That’s so much money. It’s immensely frustrating that any assistance programs we come up with ultimately become a massive wealth transfer to big companies.
SNAP, subsidized student loans/forgiveness, Medicaid/Medicare, etc. The market will just happily absorb the free taxpayer money and then still raise prices on everyone because of the increased demand.
In a world not run by the rich, for the rich this wouldn’t be an issue. Just tax large corporations over a certain size at a slightly higher rate and redistribute it back down to the poorest, turning it into a loop.
and then still raise prices on everyone because of the increased demand.
Ostensibly because of increased demand, actually due to greed.
So? What’s two billion to Walmart? They shit that kind of money.
2billion per month. So that means 24billion in a year. Last year Walmart had an income of 19billion.
They made $169 billion in gross profit this year alone.
https://www.macrotrends.net/stocks/charts/WMT/walmart/gross-profit
Gross profit is not what you think it is.
Walmart pays employees, taxes, interest on loans and a lot more other regular expenses. Those costs are not included in gross profit, but in net income. That is obviously much lower.
https://www.macrotrends.net/stocks/charts/WMT/walmart/net-income
20bn in net profit
It’s a notable chunk of their operating profit, and I assure you their shareholders will take note.
They made 169 billion in profit this year. They aren’t hurting at all.
God no lmao that’s like their entire market cap. That’s probably total revenue with a 5-10% profit margin
lmao what? their market cap is like $800 billion.
Wow I had no idea they were that close to a trillion dollars. Time to monopoly bust!
agreed lol
What the article doesn’t mention is how many of Walmarts employees are on SNAP themselves.
Thats what i thought they were referencing at first. That Walmarts were going to be shutting their doors as all their snap subsidised employees started quitting in search of jobs that they could actually put food on the table with.
Walmart tends to blight communities of similar jobs, once they are established in those communities.
Exactly. They corner the market and destroy local industries because Walmart can sell items for a cheaper price
