(NEW YORK) — Much like its fellow fast food competitors slashing prices and offering special discounts to lure in customers, Arby’s is adding a new deal to its menu with its Double the Meats Meal.
For just $7, the new Double the Meats Meal includes a Double Roast Beef or Double Beef ‘N Cheddar sandwich, along with a medium fry and medium drink.
The Double Roast Beef sandwich boasts two times the amount of slowly roasted, thinly sliced-to-order, signature roast beef piled high on a toasted sesame seed bun.
The Double Beef ‘N Cheddar also piles on a double portion of roast beef, topped with cheddar sauce and zesty Red Ranch, served on a toasted onion roll.
The new deal comes on the heels of similar promotions and discounts from Arby’s competitors. In June, McDonald’s launched a $5 Meal Deal that includes a McDouble or McChicken sandwich, small french fries, a four-piece Chicken McNuggets and a small soft drink. Earlier this month, the fast food giant extended the popular deal through December.
Several other fast food chains including Burger King, Wendy’s, Starbucks and Taco Bell have rolled out comparable discounts, hoping to entice customers looking to stretch their dollars as much as possible.
(NEW YORK) — The Federal Reserve is set to make a pivotal decision about its benchmark interest rate on Wednesday that could dial back its years-long fight against inflation.
Investors widely expect the Fed to cut interest rates for the first time since 2020, delivering long-sought relief for consumers saddled by high borrowing costs for everything from credit cards to mortgages.
“The time has come for policy to adjust,” Fed Chair Jerome Powell said last month at an annual gathering in Jackson Hole, Wyoming. “The direction of travel is clear.”
Inflation has slowed dramatically from a peak of about 9% in 2022, though it remains slightly higher than the Fed’s target of 2%.
Meanwhile, the job market has cooled. A weaker-than-expected jobs report in each of the last two months has stoked concern among some economists.
In theory, lower interest rates help stimulate economic activity and boost employment; higher interest rates slow economic performance and ease inflation.
“We will do everything we can to support a strong labor market as we make further progress toward price stability,” Powell said last month.
The chances of an interest rate cut at the Fed’s meeting on Wednesday are all but certain, according to the CME FedWatch Tool, a measure of market sentiment.
Market observers are divided over whether the Fed will impose its typical cut of a quarter of a percentage point, or opt for a larger half-point cut. The tool estimates the probability of a half-point cut at 65% and the odds of a quarter-point cut at 35%.
A half-point cut risks overstimulating the economy and rekindling elevated inflation, while a quarter-point cut threatens to delay the type of economic jumpstart that may be required to avert a recession, Seema Shah, chief global strategist at Principal Asset Management, told ABC News in a statement.
“Rarely have market expectations been so torn” on the eve of a rate decision, Shah added.
Regardless of the size of the rate cut, borrowers should not expect immediate relief, Elizabeth Renter, senior economist at NerdWallet, told ABC News in a statement.
“This initial rate cut will have little immediate impact,” Renter said. “I anticipate many consumers and business owners will take the beginning of this change in monetary policy as a sign of hope.”
The expected rate cut on Wednesday would go into effect less than 50 days before the November election.
The Fed says it bases its decisions on economic conditions and operates as an independent government body.
When asked about the 2024 election at a press conference in Washington, D.C., in December, Powell said, “We don’t think about politics.”
(NEW YORK) — Oil prices climbed more than 3% on Tuesday in the immediate aftermath of an Iranian missile attack on Israel.
The spike in prices is expected to push up the price of U.S. gasoline, experts told ABC News.
Drivers could face a price increase of between 10 and 15 cents per gallon, experts estimated. The national average price of a gallon of gas currently stands at $3.20, AAA data showed.
A further escalation of the conflict between Israel and Iran could send oil and gas prices significantly higher, said Ramanan Krishnamoorti, a professor of petroleum engineering at the University of Houston.
“Clearly this will have a huge impact on gas prices,” Krishnamoorti told ABC News. “There’s no doubt about that.”
Iran said the attack on Tuesday was retaliation for a wave of assassinations carried out by Israel over the last several weeks targeting Hezbollah leaders. Israel will have a “significant response” to Iran’s attack, an Israeli official told ABC News.
While sanctions have constrained Iranian oil output in recent years, the nation asserts control over the passage of tankers through the Strait of Hormuz, a trading route that facilitates the transport of about 15% of global oil supply.
Passage through the Suez Canal, another important shipping route for crude oil, could be impacted by further attacks, as happened with Yemen-based Houthi attacks on freight ships earlier in the war, Krishnamoorti said.
Despite a recent uptick, the price of oil stands well below a 2022 peak reached when the blazing-hot economic rebound from the pandemic collided with a supply shortage imposed by the Russia-Ukraine war. Gas prices, meanwhile, have plummeted in recent months.
The U.S. set a record for crude oil production in 2023, averaging 12.9 million barrels per day, according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration, a federal agency.
The surge in U.S. production would help limit the impact of a possible supply disruption, though oil prices are set on a global market, where a major supply shock could not be entirely accounted for with U.S. oil output, Timothy Fitzgerald, a professor of business economics at the University of Tennessee who studies the petroleum industry, told ABC News.
“This is less troubling than it would’ve been a generation ago,” Fitzgerald said. “Today, we export more crude oil than we import.”
If both sides deescalate, the price of crude oil could quickly drop back to where it stood before the Iranian attack on Tuesday, Fitzgerald added.
“There would be no lasting importance of that,” Fitzgerald said.
The rise in oil prices comes at a relatively quiet period in the U.S. gasoline market. Drivers have enjoyed a sharp decline in gasoline prices over recent months, in part due to sluggish demand for gas as the busy summer traveling season has given way to an autumn slowdown.
Still, a regional war in the Middle East could upend the market and spike prices, experts said.
Republican Sen. Lindsey Graham of South Carolina condemned Iran’s missile attack on Israel, calling it a “breaking point” on Tuesday and urging President Joe Biden’s administration to respond.
Graham called for oil refineries to be “hit and hit hard” and said his prayers are “with the people of Israel.”
President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris are monitoring the Iranian attack from the White House Situation Room. Biden directed the U.S. military to aid Israel’s defense against Iranian attacks and shoot down missiles.
ABC News’ Allison Pecorin and Jordana Miller contributed to this report.
(NEW YORK) — After once deriding cryptocurrency as a “scam,” former President Donald Trump on Monday formally threw his support behind World Liberty Financial, a crypto venture whose business model remains largely unclear but has already drawn scrutiny as a potential ethics headache for his administration if he returns to the White House in January.
Joined Monday by his two adult sons and others involved in the fledgling business, including billionaire donor Steve Witkoff, Trump declared in a livestream on X that “crypto is one of those things we have to do,” and suggested that he would work to limit regulation of the industry if elected.
“Right now, you have a very hostile [Security and Exchange Commission] … they’ve been very hostile toward crypto,” Trump said. “My attitude is different.”
Details about the venture, including Trump’s role and potential compensation, remain unclear. The company’s website, which bears an image of a backlit Trump speaking at a podium, suggests the platform will have its own crypto token, called $WL, and aspires to “empower our users to operate their finances … with no direct oversight of any government agencies or officials.”
Industry experts said the website provides few details about the company — including what it will offer, who will have access to its profits, and how the Trump family stands to make money from it. James Butterfill, the head of research at CoinShares, a digital asset management firm, told ABC News that the website contains little more than “buzzwords.”
Government ethics watchdogs consulted by ABC News were quick to point out potential conflicts of interest posed by a candidate for president launching or becoming otherwise involved with a new business within weeks of Election Day — particularly in an industry as polarizing and unregulated as crypto, in which users directly exchange digital currencies without the oversight of banks or the government.
Jordan Libowitz, a spokesperson for Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, or CREW, said a future Trump administration would have wide latitude to impact crypto policy — and Trump’s own personal stake in the industry could potentially rub up against the best interests of the country.
“We’re still in the Wild West with crypto. It’s clear there is going to be some kind of regulation, but to what extent and how friendly they are to the industry, we don’t yet know,” Libowitz said. “The president obviously appoints the people in charge of that.”
Steven Cheung, a spokesperson for the Trump campaign, rejected any suggestion that Trump’s role in World Liberty Financial could pose an ethical dilemma if he’s reelected, calling Trump “the most ethical president in American history.”
“When President Trump first ran for office, he stepped away from his very successful and lucrative businesses because the job of saving America was the most important job he’d ever have,” Cheung said in a statement to ABC News. “Before he entered the White House, he ensured everything was done within the ethics guidelines set forth.”
In addition to Trump’s adult sons Donald Trump Jr. and Eric Trump, who have for months been promoting World Liberty Financial on social media, a so-called “white paper” first reported by CoinBase indicated that Trump’s youngest son, Barron, 18, would also play a role in the firm.
Witkoff, who appeared Monday on the X livestream, said he introduced the Trumps to two other partners in the venture, Zak Folkman and Chase Herro, both of whom have a colorful business history.
Herro, who previously called himself a “dirtbag of the internet” at a crypto conference in 2018, has said he has made millions from an ecommerce business after spending three years in jail for selling drugs when he was in high school. Folkman, who first joined forces with Herro in the ecommerce business more than a decade ago, has reportedly previously taught classes on “how to date hotter girls.”
On ABC’s Good Morning America on Tuesday, Witkoff — a longtime friend to Trump and one of his campaign’s biggest financial supporters — downplayed any potential conflict posed by Trump’s foray into crypto.
“If the president is elected, which I expect him to be, then everything that he — all of his of his ownership, his businesses, will be put in some sort of a trust.” Witkoff said. “His children, I would assume, will be involved in running it. And I doubt that, therefore, that there is any conflict.”
But Danielle Brian, the executive director of the Project On Government Oversight, said that would be nothing more than “window dressing.”
“A trust managed by family members will not eliminate the conflict of interest created by a sitting president owning any business,” Brian said.
Trump’s announcement on Monday marked his transition from a vocal skeptic of digital currencies to one of the industry’s most enthusiastic proponents. As president, he complained on Twitter that crypto markets were “highly volatile and based on thin air.” In 2021, shortly after leaving the White House, Trump called cryptocurrencies a “scam.”
But during his 2024 bid for the White House, Trump has cozied up to crypto interests.
In May, his campaign said it would begin accepting contributions in cryptocurrency. Trump has regularly hosted industry enthusiasts at his properties and, in July, at the annual Bitcoin Conference, he pledged to make the U.S. the “crypto super-power” of the world.
