Main Street Dollars

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It sounds like a contradiction. A jar of cheese dip, a stick of butter, or a bag of beef jerky can no longer help a grocery store qualify to accept SNAP benefits, yet a SNAP shopper can still walk up to the register and buy any of them with an EBT card. That is not…

Stores that miss new stocking rules by November 4 lose the right to take SNAP, and wait six months to reapply

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For a small grocery or convenience store that accepts SNAP, missing a paperwork deadline is rarely fatal. A new federal stocking rule set to take full effect this fall changes that calculus for one specific requirement: what a store actually has on its shelves. Retailers that cannot show enough variety in a handful of food…

Trump opened a 300,000-ton duty-free quota on imported beef starting September 1 to bring down ground beef prices

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Ground beef has been one of the more visible price increases at U.S. grocery stores this year, and the federal government just made a second attempt this year to address it through trade policy rather than direct payments. A presidential proclamation signed August 26 temporarily expands how much beef can enter the country without paying…

Walmart says $2.9 billion in tariff refunds funded more than 11,000 price rollbacks

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Elizabeth Blessing

Walmart’s most recent quarterly earnings release places two numbers side by side. The retailer says it received nearly $2.9 billion in tariff refunds during its second fiscal quarter of 2027, the three months ending in early August, and that its U.S. stores delivered more than 11,000 price rollbacks over that same stretch. Walmart presents the…

South Carolina blocks soda and candy on SNAP cards August 31, and North Dakota does the same September 1

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Grocery shoppers using SNAP benefits in South Carolina and North Dakota are about to see fewer items ring up as eligible purchases. Both states received federal waivers letting them remove certain products from the program’s approved food list, and the clock has nearly run out on the old rules. The changes take effect one day…

One power auction added $16.1 billion to electricity costs across 13 states

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in Utilities & Energy

A power auction most households never hear about just set a $16.1 billion price tag for keeping the lights on across a stretch of the country that runs from Chicago’s suburbs to the Virginia coast. PJM Interconnection, the grid operator that runs the wholesale electricity market for 13 states and the District of Columbia, finalized…

Beef prices are running nearly 10 percent higher as cattle supplies stay tight

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Elizabeth Blessing

Beef and veal cost 9.4 percent more in July 2026, the most recent month with published federal price data, than they did a year earlier, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture. The department’s Economic Research Service now forecasts beef and veal prices will finish all of 2026 up 9.8 percent, a projection tied directly…

Diesel costs about $1.90 a gallon more than it did a year ago, and that rides into every grocery aisle

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The average price of diesel fuel in the United States hit $5.6046 a gallon this week, according to AAA’s daily national survey, up from $3.7072 a gallon a year ago — a gap of about $1.90. Almost nobody drives a diesel-powered car to the grocery store, so that number rarely shows up on a household’s…

Gas prices topped $4 a gallon every single day this August, the first August on record to do that

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AAA’s daily fuel-price tracker has never made this claim about any previous August: not one day this month has closed with the national average below $4 a gallon. That finding, published in AAA’s August 27, 2026 report, means a household that fills up two vehicles a week has been paying real extra money at the…

A federal judge threw out SNAP soda and candy bans in five states, and USDA told stores to stop enforcing them

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