It's hard to prove a connection, but easy to use your common sense on this one. 

Changes in SNAP benefits and making people reapply after the government shutdown seem to have had a dramatic effect on the market for certain types of goods. 

Particularly, snack food and the luxury resale market in wildly expensive sneakers. 

PepsiCo spent $2.8 million last year lobbying to keep junk food eligible for food stamps.

Then RFK got 18 states to ban SNAP purchases of soda, candy, and processed snacks. Within a week, PepsiCo cut Doritos, Lay's, and Tostitos prices by up to 15%.

The CEO blamed…

— James Hickman (@thesovereignman) February 11, 2026

PepsiCo spent $2.8 million last year lobbying to keep junk food eligible for food stamps.

Then RFK got 18 states to ban SNAP purchases of soda, candy, and processed snacks. Within a week, PepsiCo cut Doritos, Lay's, and Tostitos prices by up to 15%.

The CEO blamed "affordability." But the timing tells the real story.

SNAP is a $100 billion-a-year program. According to the USDA, 20 cents of every SNAP dollar goes to junk food. Frito-Lay products appeared in 7.2% of all SNAP shopping trips.

The moment the government stopped subsidizing demand, PepsiCo had to compete on price. No regulation. No price caps. No antitrust probe. The subsidy disappeared, and the market corrected overnight.

Now consider that this same pattern — government money in, prices up — plays out in college tuition, healthcare, defense, and every other industry with a guaranteed government buyer.

Pepsi was one company, one product line, one program. Imagine what happens when the subsidies stop across the board.

PepsiCo just announced major price drops in its snack foods and the closure of a significant number of plants that make them. It is cutting 20% of its product line and making its pricing more aggressive.

Wal-Mart has started banning junk food sales on EBT. People are starting to notice and freak out, this one claims they might as well cut off her EBT altogether. She doesn’t understand that the point of this is to make them healthy, snap stands for supplemental nutrition… pic.twitter.com/lgJYv4BT3F

— SonnyBoy?? (@gotrice2024) August 10, 2025

Nobody is saying that the change is driven by SNAP, but the changes are clearly driven by SNAP. After all, 20% of all SNAP money goes to buy junk food, and while Blue states are holding the line to ensure that their obese welfare recipients can still buy up all that sweet sugar and carb-laden food, it's hard to ignore the fact that dropping junk food off the menu for subsidized food will take a big bite out the profit margins. 

It's simple economics:

Junk food and soda is the #1 expenditure of SNAP recipients.

January 1st: RFK removed sodas and junk food from SNAP.

February 1st: Pepsi (the parent company of Doritos) reduced prices by 15%.

— John LeFevre (@JohnLeFevre) February 5, 2026

You can thank RFK, Jr., for driving down the price of Doritos. 

The top 20 items on SNAP include:
?Soda
?Sugary juice drinks
?Fried snacks
?Candy
?Ice Cream
?Cookies
?Baked desserts
?Pizza
?Sugary Cereal

This is war on American health - and Medicaid budgets with the disease this causes.

This admin is fixing it.

— Calley Means (@calleymeans) January 12, 2026

The math in the sneaker resale market has absolutely crashed, and it is impossible to ignore the connection to the government shutdown and the sudden reduction in SNAP benefits, as everyone had to reapply. A gig—flipping desirable sneakers at well above retail prices has suddenly become a money loser.

If you are still holding onto a stack of Jordan 1 boxes in your closet hoping to fund your retirement, we have bad news: The bubble didn’t just burst; it evaporated.

For a decade, the “Sneaker Game” was the easiest side hustle in America. You bought a pair of Off-Whites or Travis Scotts for $180, flipped them for $1,200, and repeated the cycle. It felt like printing money.

But in early 2026, the music has stopped. StockX charts are bleeding red, Nike’s stock is down ~25% year-to-date, and the “Resale Bros” are panic-selling their inventory.

This isn’t just a lull. It is a structural collapse of the “Flip Economy.” Here is the data-driven autopsy of what happened, based on the latest Q2 2026 financial reports.

Unlike junk food, where prices are being driven down by increments, the resale price of luxury sneakers has cratered. People who used to flip sneakers at several hundred percent margins are now forced to take a loss, selling below the retail price. 

Let’s look at the scoreboard. In 2020, 58% of all sneaker releases traded above retail. Today? That number has plummeted to 47%.

That means statistically, if you buy two pairs of shoes to flip, one of them is guaranteed to lose you money.

The margins have been squeezed by a deadly combination of platform fees and consumer apathy:

• The Math: A standard Jordan Retro costs $215 after tax. StockX/Goat fees take ~13%. Shipping takes $15. To break even, you need to sell that shoe for $265.
• The Reality: Most “General Release” (GR) Jordans are now sitting on resale apps for $180-$220. The average reseller is paying $40 for the privilege of selling a shoe.

There are lots of explanations being floated, but the suddenness of the crash suggests that this is not just a change in trends but is driven by an exogenous variable, and it is not too outrageous to notice that a lot of "urban" kids wear these outrageously expensive shoes. And if the flow of free money slows down, the demand for luxury products goes down with it. 

CNN's Ashley Allison says SNAP is having a "massive impact" after she went to her eyebrow technician who told her they had to fire people because clients don't have money to do their brows.

The horror.pic.twitter.com/HcSDbbiN2q

— Defiant L’s (@DefiantLs) November 8, 2025

During the government shutdown, liberals were accidentally pointing this out. Apparently, we were subsidizing expensive hairstyles, eyebrow maintenance, manicures, and massages by picking up the cost of food for people. Liberals decried the economic effects on providers of these services, without realizing that many middle-class people who were subsidizing them were shocked to learn that. 

I know you will be surprised that I was never a major customer of Air Jordans, either in the retail or resale market, but even if I were, I am not sure why my taxes should subsidize other people purchasing $200-$1200 sneakers. 

As I wrote the other day, I really have no idea what percentage of our economy is basically fake. The government prints money; politicians then distribute it to their friends, and a lot of it gets washed through NGOs and ends up as fraud. 

It's a massive drag on the real economy. 

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