We wish we had some good economic news to report for once, but it looks like there’s no chance of that happening until November 6th at the earliest. Consumer and market confidence will start to rebound immediately if Donald Trump wins reelection on November 5th. Unfortunately, the “retail apocalypse” caused by Bidenomics is going to continue until the end of the year, with thousands of retail stores expected to permanently shutter.
Conn’s HomePlus filed for bankruptcy in July. For those unfamiliar with the store, it’s a home furniture and electronics chain that operates mainly in Sunbelt states. Under the original plan, Conn’s was going to close 71 stores. A few days later, that plan ballooned into 559 store closures by year’s end. 310 of the stores are dealer-owned.
The economic devastation of Joe Biden and Kamala Harris’s policies extends from there. The closure of those Conn’s HomePlus stores will result in 3,800 jobs being nuked in Arizona, Alabama, Texas, Colorado, Florida, Georgia, Louisiana, Mississippi, North Carolina, Oklahoma, South Carolina, Tennessee and Virginia.
Most Americans can no longer afford to buy a new home under Bidenomics, let alone pay to furnish it.
Conn’s HomePlus joins the shocking and growing list of other stores that cannot keep their doors open in a Democrat-run economy. The leader is the Dollar General-owned Family Dollar, which has already shut down a whopping 600 locations across the US. Another 370 Family Dollar stores will be shuttered in the coming months as their leases expire.
2024 is also the final year of a three-year plan for CVS to shut down 900 pharmacy stores. Foot Locker shut down 113 locations during the fiscal quarter that ended on February 3rd. Express shut down 95 of its brand clothing stores in malls across the country, as well as all 12 of its UpWest stores, for a total of 107.
Rite Aid closed 150 stores in 2023 and will add another 77 to the list of closures this year. Macy’s has announced plans to close 150 stores over three years, beginning with 50 this year. Big Lots closed 35 stores last year and another 40 locations will be shut down in 2024.
FoxTrot was a chain of boutique convenience stores that operated in Washington, DC, Dallas, Austin, and Chicago. It shut down all 33 of its locations and went out of business this year after falling $35 million short of its sales projections for 2023.
That comes to a grand total of 1,766 retail stores that will permanently close in 2024. Tens of thousands of Americans will also lose their jobs because of the closures. Communities will get uglier because the owners of the buildings will put up plywood in the windows. It’s not as though other companies are doing great that can pick up all those empty leases. The problem expands from there as the owners of the empty buildings can no longer pay their mortgages, which puts further strain on the banking system, and it just keeps going.
This is the worst economy that most Americans have seen in their lifetimes. The only advice we can give to people at this point is, “Hang in there.” Hang on by your fingernails. Hang on for dear life and vote for Donald Trump in November. If Americans cannot bring themselves to carry out that simple act of self-preservation, then we don’t deserve to have a country any longer. If you want things to turn around and want to see the economy start to heal, vote for Donald Trump.
