VICE: Trump’s Obsession with Toilets Is Less of a Random Rant Than It Appears

This focus on flushing seemed at first blush like just another one of those weird fixations that habitually grips a president with the attention span of a TV remote. But the conservative war on toilets—or the war on behalf of the toilets of yesteryear—both predates Trump and lines up with a surprisingly large chunk of Trumpian grievance politics. Denouncing toilets, lightbulbs, and sinks as worse than they used to be is a way to both tap into a powerful strain of nostalgia and express contempt for the regulatory state. [...]

Days after Trump complained about dishwashers in Milwaukee, the Department of Energy announced a rule change that introduced a set of changes that will limit the government's ability to set new efficiency standards on appliances. "Existing standards are saving the typical household about $500 per year. That's an accumulation of standards developed over the past 30 years that are now resulting in more efficient appliances and devices on the market today," said Andrew deLaski, the executive director of the Appliance Standards Awareness Project at the American Council for an Energy-Efficient Economy. "This means that it'll be much harder to keep improving those standards and adding to those savings in the future." [...]

Making appliances more efficient used to be seen as a relatively uncontroversial good. The first bill setting appliance standards was signed by Ronald Reagan in 1987 after passing a Democrat-controlled Congress on bipartisan lines. In 1992, George H.W. Bush signed legislation requiring toilets to use 1.6 gallons per flush, and in 2007 George W. Bush approved a law that phased out particularly energy-inefficient lightbulbs. These regulations have made a difference: For instance, according to Appliance Standards Awareness Project data, fridges have gotten more energy efficient even as they've gotten bigger and cheaper in inflation-adjusted dollars. Consumer Reports notes that dishwashers use half the water they did 20 years ago, which also means a reduction in energy required to heat that water, though the tradeoff is they take longer to run through a cycle. And while newer energy-saving lightbulbs like LEDs are more expensive than traditional incandescent bulbs, they also last much much longer and save consumers money on their electricity bills.

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