USA - Shortly after 1pm ET, the shares of Dollar General and Dollar Tree tumbled after it was unveiled that President Donald Trump's budget was proposing to effectively abandon food stamps, slashing the program's traditional cash payments and substituting them with packages of "100% American grown food" for recipients.
According to Bloomberg, this would represent "one of the biggest shakeups of the US food stamp program in its five decade history." According to Bloomberg, the proposal would give all households receiving more than $90 a month in cash a food-aid package that would "include items such as shelf-stable milk, ready to eat cereals, pasta, peanut butter, beans and canned fruit, vegetables, and meat, poultry or fish."
Cash payouts would be gradually phased out. As Bloomberg adds, under the proposed plan, the amount of food a household receives would be scaled to the size of the allotment, with about half of the assistance coming as food instead of cash.
There is just one not so minor detail... Trump's budget proposal has virtually no chance of being implemented by Congress in its current form, and furthermore any members of Congress who voted to overhaul the foodstamp program are guaranteed to have their political career dramatically truncated. Which is why this particular Trump proposal has virtually no chance of passage.