Consumer Freedom and the Revolution of Common Sense

President Donald Trump is at it again – waging a war. No, not the one on tariffs. This war is based on common sense.

On Wednesday, the president signed an executive order promising to make life a little sweeter for American consumers, “whenever they turn on household faucets,” reports James Freeman in the WSJ. Joe Biden, while in office, led the assault on household faucets. Now Congress is forcing a repeal of Biden’s maleficent mandates.

Donald Trump’s EO recognizes the small but meaningful pushback against the Obama-Biden overregulation. Twice in the last 12 years, those administrations circulated multi-thousand-word regulations defining the word “showerhead.”

You’d be wrong if you thought the war was just on showerheads. Also brutalized were gas stoves, water heaters, washing machines, furnaces, dishwashers, and more, “waging war on the reliable tools Americans depend on daily.” Those appliances worked perfectly fine, Donald Trump noted, before Biden’s meddling piled on convoluted regulations that made those appliances worse.

From the Competitive Enterprise Institute, Bob Lieberman writes:

The Biden administration gave us far too many anti-consumer appliance regulations, and some of the worst were ones supported by manufacturers angling to create a captive market for their high-priced “eco-friendly” models.

This is precisely what happened with a Biden Department of Energy (DOE) regulation targeting the most affordable type of gas-fired instantaneous (tankless) water heaters… Senators should ignore the companies hoping to kill off their lower priced competition and support this legislation that will do what is best for consumers…

For the sake of choice as well as affordability, argues Mr. Lieberman, the Senate should take the side of consumer freedom over government mandates. Also important for consumers to remember, supposedly greener water heaters favored by the opponents will remain on the market whether or not this measure becomes law

The only subject at issue is whether they get shielded from competition with cheaper versions…