Trump successfully turns off crazy Biden era regulations on your home appliances

PresidentDonald Trumphas sharply diverged from his predecessor on nearly every issue, perhaps most of all concerning federal home appliance regulations.The Biden administration loved regulating appliances, imposing new requirements for stoves, dishwashers, furnaces, air conditioners, water heaters, light bulbs, refrigerators, washing machines and more.Trump wasted no time targeting such meddling with an Inauguration Day executive order reconsideringthese regulations, and his administration is making progress on this priority.Here is an overview of what the administration achieved in year one on home appliance regulations — and what remains undone.

1. Dishwashers and washing machines — These are arguably the two most overregulated home appliances.Washing machines have faced six rounds of successively tighter energy and water use limits over the decades while dishwashers have had four, and the results have been downright painful for consumers.There is evidence that washing machines now require additional maintenance and don’t clean as well or last as long.And dishwashers take two hours or more to complete a load of dishes, twice the amount of time that it took before the feds started tinkering with them.Nonetheless, the Biden Department of Energy (DOE) tacked on yet another round of restrictions for both appliances that will take effect over the next few years.

Thankfully, the current DOE has proposed repealing the most troublesome parts of these regulations, so washing machines and dishwashers might actually start getting better rather than worse.

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2. Central air conditioners — All of these appliance regulations raise prices, but the biggest increase by far was for residential air conditioning systems.  A homeowner replacing a 15-year-old system that probably cost around $5,000 when new is likely to face more than twice that amount today.While several factors play a role in this unfortunate trend, the single largest reason is a Biden Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) rule mandating that all cooling systems manufactured after January 1, 2025, meet new climate change requirements.Industry sources report price hikes of up to $3,000 last summer — the first one under the Biden regulatory regime — and that comes on top of other EPA and DOE measures that had already increased prices in the preceding years.

The Trump EPA is attempting to turn the tide with a proposed rule providing more compliance flexibility for these systems.If successful, it could help moderate any furtherair conditioning cost increases.

3. Water heaters — It’s the appliance homeowners rarely ever think about until the moment it stops working, but Biden’s regulators gave water heaters plenty of attention.One December 2024 DOE regulation would have effectively banned tankless gas water heaters — the kind that heat the water as needed and don’t require a storage tank — by imposing prohibitively expensive new requirements.Fortunately, last April, Congress and President Trump enacted a law repealing this regulation and thus preserving the tankless option for homeowners who prefer it.However, the deregulatory news on conventional tank storage water heaters is not so good, with a separate Biden-era regulation still on the books that is estimated to raise costs by as much as $953 when it takes effect in 2029.

4. Furnaces — Biden’s 2023 furnace regulation may be the worst one that has not yet been revisited by theTrump administration.It effectively outlaws gas-fired non-condensing furnaces, which is the best option for millions of older homes.Even the DOE estimates its rule will result in cost increases of up to $853 when it takes effect in 2028.Industry sources fear a larger price boost, which will fall disproportionately on lower-income homeowners.

federal water use restrictionsfor showers, but he alone can’t repeal them since they come straight out of a 1992 law that can only be undone with the help of Congress.But modest improvements are possible, and the president did issue an executive order and a DOE rule adding a bit more wiggle room to the way the agency interprets the law.Hence, the water use limits now apply to each nozzle rather than the overall unit, so showers with two or more nozzles are legal.  A recently-passed House bill would codify this modification, but there is yet no Senate version.

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Overall, the Trump administration has initiated a good deal of appliance-related deregulation in its first year, but equally important is what Washington has stopped doing – it is no longer piling on new regulatory restrictions, as Biden did at a furious pace for four years and a PresidentKamala Harriswould have very likely continued doing.Quite the contrary, the feds have done a U-turn and are now focused on revisiting measures already on the books and making changes to them. 

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It’s a solid start, but only a start.Some of the above-mentioned reforms can and should go further, and there are still several appliance regulations, such as those impacting furnaces and water heaters, that have yet to be addressed.We can only hope that the fight for homeowners continues to be a Trump administration priority for the next three years.