New president wants freedom for bathrooms, but also to choose cars, showers and washing machines
And your bathroom, is it free? This is one of his priorities as president, in a curious proposal that defends the freedom of choice for North American consumers in different products. And one of them is the toilet, an old Donald Trump fight that is now back with a vengeance.
“President Trump’s actions in the energy field allow consumers to choose vehicles, showers, toilets, washing machines, light bulbs and dishwashers,” said a document laying out the presidency’s priorities that .
But what, after all, is the matter with North Americans’ toilets? The answer is easy: this measure is part of a logic of reversing several measures that aimed to combat climate change and make North American homes more efficient in environmental and energy terms, and which will now be reversed.
This isn’t even a new fight. In the last days of his first term, which ended four years ago, Donald Trump approved laws that relaxed the rules for showers, washing machines and… toilets. The outgoing president complained that the equipment used by the Americans had insufficient volumes of water.
But then Joe Biden arrived and reversed everything, in an attempt to reverse everything. The situation ended up in court, with prosecutors linked to the Republican Party trying to prevent a return to the time before Donald Trump. The process then went to the Department of Energy.
As had happened in 2020, it was very close to the new presidential transition that everything changed. The Department of Energy finalized, days after the elections that gave Donald Trump victory, Joe Biden’s proposal. And now it all comes back, again.
At the end of the day, what happened to light bulbs happens to toilets. This is all an environmental issue, which for Donald Trump becomes secondary. “I mean, ‘Why do I always look so orange? You know why: because of the new lights,” the president said again at the end of 2019, when the United States House of Representatives was voting on his impeachment.
“They are terrible. We look terrible. They cost us much, much more. About four or five times more”, he reiterated, arguing that energy prices, a sector that has just entered a national emergency, suffered from the measures taken first by Barack Obama and then by Joe Biden. Namely, some of these measures, contrary to what Donald Trump defended, came from the time of George W. Bush.
Days before that, a White House account reported this same situation. “If you like incandescent bulbs, you can keep your incandescent bulbs. The Obama administration tried to limit Americans from buying more expensive LED bulbs for their homes. Thanks to President Donald Trump, go ahead and decorate your home with the bulbs that want”, wrote the same account.
If you like your lightbulbs, you can keep your lightbulbs! The Obama Admin tried to limit Americans to buying more-expensive LED bulbs for their homes—but thanks to President , go ahead and decorate your house with whatever lights you want. 💡
— The White House 45 Archived (@WhiteHouse45)
What was happening with light bulbs is what is happening now with toilets. North American rules tightened so that toilets now have fewer liters of flushing, as a measure of environmental protection and efficiency.
“People are flushing 10 times, 15 times, instead of just one. Not me, of course, not me. But you,” he also said in 2019, pointing to a member of the audience at a speech given in the Roosevelt Room , in the White House complex.
It is, after all, one of the many measures that Project 2025, from the conservative Heritage Foundation, intends to apply, in a document that defends the end of efficiency parameters in favor of consumption.
