Subway sued for allegedly shorting customers on meat, ‘false and misleading advertisements’
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(NEW YORK) — A newly filed lawsuit has accused Subway of “unfair and deceptive trade practices” and selling its steak-and-cheese sandwiches based on “false and misleading advertisements,” that the lawsuit claims show customers getting at least three times more meat than is actually in the product.
The class-action complaint against Subway was filed on Monday in the United States District Court for the Eastern District of New York by plaintiff Anna Tollison, accusing Subway of using “photographs in its advertisements that make it appear that the Steak & Cheese sandwich contains at least 200% more meat than the actual sandwiches that customers receive,” according to the lawsuit.
“Subway’s advertisements for the Product are unfair and financially damaging to consumers as they are receiving a product that is materially lower in value than what is being represented,” the lawsuit says. “Subway actions are especially concerning now that inflation, food, and meat prices are very high and many consumers, especially lower income consumers, are struggling financially.”
The lawsuit also says that Subway’s promise of a portion that is larger is “causing consumers to come to, or order from, Subway restaurants and make purchases that they would not have otherwise made.”
The lawsuit says it stems from Tollison’s visit to a Subway in Jamaica, New York, on Aug. 23 when she picked up a steak-and-cheese sandwich after ordering it through Subway’s mobile app for $6.99 plus tax.
“After she picked up and began eating her sandwich, [Tollison] realized that there was barely any steak in the sandwich and that the photographs that she relied on were grossly misleading,” the lawsuit says.
The lawsuit is seeking unspecified damages for New Yorkers who bought the sandwiches in the last three years from Oct. 28, 2021 and alleges “egregious” violations of the state’s consumer protection laws.
This is not the first time Subway has dealt with lawsuits critical of their business. In 2021, Ireland’s Supreme Court issued a ruling declaring that for the purposes of tax law, the bread served in Subway’s hot sandwiches does not actually meet the legal definition of “bread” because of its sugar content and is rather a “confectionary or fancy baked good.”
In that case, Justice Donal O’Donnell in the Ireland Supreme Court said that the definition of “bread” was originally established to make a distinction between the starch in other baked goods, like cookies or cake or brownies, that are sugary and therefore not healthy enough to be considered essential foods.
“Subway’s bread is, of course, bread,” Subway said in a statement given to ABC News. “We have been baking fresh bread in our stores for more than three decades and our guests return each day for sandwiches made on bread that smells as good as it tastes.”
Subway also previously defended themselves against a lawsuit for more than four years claiming that their “footlong” sandwiches were too short. That case was dismissed in 2017.
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(NEW YORK) — The debate between Vice President Kamala Harris and former President Donald Trump on Tuesday opened with a fiery exchange about the economy, an issue that often ranks as the top priority for voters.
The two candidates exchanged sharp barbs over the nation’s recent bout of inflation, Trump’s plan for an escalation of tariffs, and the economic proposals put forward by Harris.
Economists who spoke to ABC News offered an assessment of the attacks leveled by the two candidates, fact-checking major claims and providing context for a full evaluation of their implications.
Here’s what to know about what economists thought of key claims made during the debate:
Harris: “My opponent has a plan that I call the Trump sales tax, which would be a 20% tax on everyday goods that you rely on to get through the month.”
Harris deploys the phrase “Trump sales tax” in reference to Trump’s plan for additional tariffs in a potential second term.
Trump told Fox Business last year that a tax on all imported goods could land at 10%. In April, he proposed a higher tariff of at least 60% on Chinese goods.
Economists who spoke to ABC News confirmed that tariffs are widely thought to raise prices for consumers in the importing country. That’s because foreign producers typically pass along some or all of the tax burden to consumers in the form of higher prices, they said.
“This is generally accepted in economics,” said Stephan Weiler, a professor of economics at Colorado State University and a former Fed research officer.
Economists couldn’t verify the estimate put forward by Harris of a 20% increase on the prices of goods, in part because it’s difficult to predict exactly how foreign manufacturers might respond to tariffs.
In theory, foreign producers that control a given market could offset higher taxes by pushing the costs onto consumers with price increases, Yeva Nersisyan, a professor of economics at Franklin & Marshall College, told ABC News. However, Nersisyan added, companies in competitive industries may face more difficulty doing so.
“It’s hard to say whether that 20% number is accurate,” Nersisyan said.
Trump: “We have inflation like very few people have ever seen before. Probably the worst in our nation’s history.”
Economists who spoke to ABC News rejected the assertion that the nation’s bout of inflation marks its worst ever, noting that the U.S. endured higher price increases as recently as the 1980s.
In addition, economists said Trump overstated the extent to which the Biden administration caused the rapid rise in prices, though they acknowledged that a stimulus measure enacted by Biden may have contributed to some of the inflation.
Like many economic problems, inflation emerged due to an imbalance between supply and demand, economists said.
Hundreds of millions of people across the globe who endured pandemic-era lockdowns replaced restaurant expenditures with online orders of couches and exercise bikes. But the demand for goods and labor far outpaced supply, as COVID-19-related bottlenecks slowed delivery times and infection fears kept production workers on the sidelines.
“The number-one cause of the inflation was a supply adjustment to the COVID shock, particularly coming out of isolation,” Jeffrey Frankel, an economist at Harvard University, told ABC News.
Pandemic-era spending measures enacted by Trump and Biden may also have contributed to the price spike, economists said.
Jason Furman, a professor at Harvard University and former economic adviser to President Barack Obama, estimated that Biden’s American Rescue Plan added between 1 and 4 percentage points to the inflation rate in 2021, Roll Call reported. Michael Strain, of the conservative-leaning American Enterprise Institute, estimated that the legislation added 3 percentage points to inflation.
“One could argue that the COVID-related policies helped heat and possibly overheat the economy,” Weiler said.
Harris: “Donald Trump left us the worst unemployment since the Great Depression … what we have done is clean up Donald Trump’s mess.”
The economy had already emerged from the pandemic-induced recession and begun to recover by the time Biden took office, economists said.
However, the U.S. remained well below pre-pandemic levels in some key measures of economic health, including employment. In turn, economists said, Biden inherited an economy in need of significant rejuvenation.
The unemployment rate peaked at 14.8% in April 2020 when Trump was in office – which was indeed the highest level since the Great Depression, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. But unemployment rapidly declined to 6.4% in January 2021 by the time Trump left office, as the economy started to rebalance.
The effort to blame Trump for the spike in unemployment is misleading, since it resulted from a once-in-a-century pandemic, economists said.
“COVID is the tidal wave that overwhelmed the whole story,” Weiler said. “The politics of this is hyperbole.”
The COVID-induced recession lasted two months in the spring of 2020, the shortest U.S. recession ever recorded, according to the National Bureau of Economic Research, a non-profit organization that serves as the recognized authority on economic downturns. The speedy recovery was owed in part to trillions in economic stimulus enacted by Trump that March.
“It was very quick and very, very big,” Nersisyan said.
Still, the economy suffered a dearth of jobs and persistent supply blockages when Biden took office, economists said. Over the course of the Biden administration, the labor market expanded at a rapid pace while economic growth quickened. By 2022, the economy had recovered all of the jobs that were lost during the pandemic.
“The recovery from the recession had already begun when Biden took office, but it hadn’t gotten that far,” Frankel said.
Trump: “She doesn’t have a plan. She copied Biden’s plan. And it’s, like, four sentences, like, run-Spot-run. Four sentences that are just, oh, we’ll try and lower taxes.”
Trump sharply criticized Harris for a perceived lack of detailed economic proposals.
Some economists who spoke to ABC News agreed that there was an absence of a complete economic plans from Harris. However, they added, Trump has also failed to provide a detailed set of policy proposals on economic issues.
“I would like to see more detailed policy proposals from both candidates,” Anne Villamil, a professor of economics at the University of Iowa, told ABC News.
“For Harris, I would like to know how her policies would differ from current policies,” Villamil added. “For Trump, I would like to know how his policies would differ from the policies of his previous administration.”
Last month, Harris unveiled economic plans intended to ease inflation, fix the housing market, and slash taxes for middle-income families. The plans include eye-catching proposals such as a $25,000 subsidy for first-time homebuyers and a ban on grocery price gouging, the latter of which had not been put forward by Biden.
Harris has also proposed a 28% tax on long-term capital gains, which clocks in well below the 39.6% tax rate for such income put forward by Biden.
Trump has said he would renew his signature tax-cut measure, which eased taxes for individuals and corporations, while vowing to do away with taxes on tips and Social Security benefits.
“Trump is not one who has a lot of detailed policies himself,” Nersisyan said. “This is not a policy election.”
(WASHINGTON) — Former President Donald Trump has proposed tariffs as the solution for a host of perceived ills: the decline of U.S. manufacturing, the arrival of undocumented immigrants and the costs of childcare, among others.
“To me, the most beautiful word in the dictionary is ‘tariff,'” Trump said this week during an appearance at the Economic Club of Chicago.
On the campaign trail, Trump has rarely mentioned the threat of a potential trade war, in which foreign nations could respond to tariffs by slapping U.S. imports with taxes of their own.
Economists who spoke to ABC News said Trump’s tariff proposals would all but certainly trigger a global trade war, diminishing sales for U.S. exporters, which account for about 10% of the nation’s economy. The disruption would likely trigger job cuts and slow the nation’s economic performance, economists added.
On the other hand, the move would bring more of the supply chain back to U.S. soil, economists said, and it would likely spur growth and hiring at some firms by protecting them from foreign competition. But the same experts cautioned that such benefits would be far outweighed by the consequences.
“The essence of a trade war is you impose tariffs and other countries respond by putting high tariffs on your exports. It’s tit for tat,” Douglas Irwin, a professor of economics at Dartmouth College who specializes in the history of U.S. trade policy, told ABC News.
“Tariffs are easy to impose but hard to remove,” Irwin added.
In response to ABC News’ request for comment, the Trump campaign pointed to a series of statements about tariffs made by Trump and his allies, including remarks from Trump Campaign Senior Advisor Brian Hughes.
“Time warp alert! Just like 2016, Wall Street and so-called expert forecasts said that Trump policies would result in lower growth and higher inflation, the media took these forecasts at face value, and the record was never corrected when actual growth and job gains widely outperformed these opinions,” Hughes said.
“These Wall Street elites would be wise to review the record and acknowledge the shortcomings of their past work if they’d like their new forecasts to be seen as credible,” he added.
On the campaign trail, Trump has promised a sharp escalation of tariffs during his first term. He has proposed tariffs of between 60% and 100% on Chinese goods.
Envisioning a far-reaching policy, Trump has proposed a tax of between 10% and 20% on all imported products. On Tuesday, he told the audience at the Economic Club of Chicago that such a tariff could reach as high as 50%.
Economists widely expect that tariffs of this magnitude would increase prices paid by U.S. shoppers, since importers typically pass along the cost of higher taxes to consumers. Trump’s tariffs would cost the typical U.S. household about $2,600 per year, according to an estimate from the Peterson Institute for International Economics.
Meanwhile, there could be a second wave of consequences if foreign countries were to impose retaliatory tariffs, economists said.
“You might see a dramatic decrease in U.S. exports, which could then have employment effects for people working in those sectors,” Kara Reynolds, an economist at American University, told ABC News. She pointed to the manufacturing and farming as industries especially vulnerable to a trade war.
For evidence of such an outcome, one need look no further than Trump’s first term, during which a slew of tariffs often induced a retaliatory response.
Tariffs imposed during Trump’s first term often induced retaliatory tariffs. The European Union and Canada responded to tariffs on steel and aluminum with tariffs of their own. Trump slapped tariffs on about $360 billion worth of Chinese goods, but China responded with tariffs on tens of billions of dollars worth of U.S exports.
Chinese tariffs on U.S. soybean exports caused a steep decline in sales to Chinese customers, dropping exports from $12.3 billion in 2017 to $3.1 billion in 2018, according to the Georgetown University Journal of International Affairs. In response, the Trump administration paid billions of dollars in direct aid to farmers to make up for the losses.
“He felt obligated to bail out the farmers,” Robert Lawrence, a professor of trade and investment at Harvard University’s Kennedy School of Government, told ABC News. “Now, we’re talking about potential actions on a much grander scale.”
Alongside retaliatory tariffs, many countries would seek suppliers in places where such tariffs are not on the books, Lawrence added.
“Trump is likely to isolate the U.S. and drive other countries to do business with each other,” Lawrence said. “This would have a very adverse effect.”
On the campaign trail, Trump has sharply disagreed with such fears, saying large-scale tariffs would rejuvenate U.S. manufacturing and propel economic growth.
At the Chicago Economic Club on Tuesday, Trump said tariffs would force companies to locate factories in the U.S. as a way of circumventing the tariffs, which in turn would boost domestic production and employment.
“We’re going to have thousands of companies coming into this country,” Trump said. “We’re going to grow it like it’s never grown before, and we’re going to protect them when they come in because we’re not going to have somebody undercut them.”
Economists said higher tariffs could expand certain areas of U.S. manufacturing that face stiff competition from abroad, but the policy also risks raising input costs and slowing output at U.S. producers that import their raw materials.
Trump’s tariffs decreased U.S. employment by 166,000 jobs, according to a study from the nonprofit Tax Foundation, which cited an increase in import costs for U.S. employers. A separate study from the U.S.-China Business Council estimated up to nearly 250,000 lost jobs as a result of the tariffs.
“It certainly would make the U.S. more self-reliant, but it would come with far greater costs,” Lawrence said.
(New York) — Conspiracy theorist Alex Jones accused The Onion and Sandy Hook Elementary School families of “collusive bidding” and asked a bankruptcy court judge to halt the sale of his Infowars platform.
Jones, who defamed the Sandy Hook families by calling the 2012 massacre a hoax and the parents of the 20 first graders actors, called The Onion’s winning $1.75 million bid “sheer nonsense” because it’s half of what the losing bidder offered.
The Onion began a “systematic effort to confuse Mr. Jones’s personal public following with messages espousing gun control in a manner such that Mr Jones’s personal public following would be utterly confused and misled,” Jones said in an overnight court filing.
His request follows a similar push for an injunction by First United American Companies, which is affiliated with Jones through the sale of dietary supplements.
The plaintiffs nor the trustee immediately responded to Jones but the trustee has previously called the auction result legitimate and asked the court for approval.
