New Wave of Trump’s Deregulation Loosens Restrictions on Showerheads, Plastic Straws, and More

April 10, 2025 TruthUSA

The president’s measures also focus on overturning Biden-era restrictions on gas stoves, water heaters, washing machines, furnaces, and dishwashers.

On April 9, President Donald Trump enacted four executive actions aimed at reducing regulations across various sectors, particularly in energy and home appliances.

While Trump signed these actions in the Oval Office, a White House official noted that one of them would effectively revoke a series of water-pressure mandates set by the Biden administration for items such as dishwashers, toilets, sinks, and showerheads.

Trump criticized high-efficiency water faucets, arguing they consume the same volume of water as the products they were intended to replace.

“It’s absurd. What happens is you end up washing your hands for five times longer, so it’s the same [amount of] water,” Trump stated. “We will make it possible for people to … have access to all of these items, including straws.”

The president referenced a prior executive order that annulled a Biden-era regulation prohibiting plastic straws in federal venues, asserting that he would persuade Congress to solidify his actions on Wednesday “because a lot of it is just common sense.”

Trump’s directive on water pressure orders the energy secretary to eliminate a federal rule that redefined “showerhead” during the Obama and Biden administrations, which had a 13,000-word definition, as reported by the White House.

The Trump administration plans to revert to the definition established in the 1992 energy law, which prescribed a 2.5-gallons-per-minute standard for showers. Trump’s directive criticizes prior regulatory actions for making showerheads “weak and ineffective.”

Previously, showerheads were redefined as “nozzles,” making multi-nozzle showers illegal if their combined output exceeded 2.5 gallons per minute, according to the White House.

Additionally, Trump’s order focuses on overturning Biden-era regulations concerning gas stoves, water heaters, washing machines, furnaces, and dishwashers.

The president also signed an executive order that mandates ten agencies and subagencies to incorporate a one-year expiration date for all current energy regulations. If no extensions are made prior to this deadline, all energy regulations will terminate by September 30, 2026.

“Agencies will only renew those regulations that genuinely benefit American interests. All others will expire, thereby resetting the regulatory environment,” states the order’s fact sheet from the White House.

Agencies affected will also be obligated to include a five-year expiration date in any future energy regulations unless they are classified as deregulatory.

Other Regulations Targeted

Another executive order on Wednesday focused on rolling back “anti-competitive” regulations. It instructs agency heads to collaborate with the attorney general and Federal Trade Commission (FTC) chairman to examine all department regulations and identify those that “impose anti-competitive restraints.”

“This includes regulations that enable monopolies, hinder market entry, or unjustly burden agency procurement,” the White House fact sheet clarifies.

Agency heads are required to submit a report identifying all “anti-competitive” regulations within 70 days, including suggested actions to “rescind or modify them as necessary” to the FTC chairman and attorney general.

The president additionally signed a memorandum necessitating federal agencies to repeal regulations identified as unlawful by ten recent Supreme Court rulings.

These rulings impact a wide range of policy areas, from the Chevron doctrine to Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) regulations, including cases like Loper Bright Enterprises v. Raimondo, West Virginia v. EPA, SEC v. Jarkesy, Michigan v. EPA, Sackett v. EPA, Ohio v. EPA, Cedar Point Nursery v. Hassid, Students for Fair Admissions, Inc. v. President and Fellows of Harvard College, Carson v. Makin, and Roman Catholic Diocese of Brooklyn v. Cuomo.

Federal agencies are ordered to expeditiously eliminate any regulations that violate these decisions, utilizing the “good cause” exception under the Administrative Procedure Act.

The 2024 Loper Bright Enterprises v. Raimondo ruling notably overturned the Chevron doctrine, which mandated federal courts to defer to a federal agency’s interpretation of ambiguous statutes it administered if deemed reasonable.

Trump’s memorandum instructs agencies to promptly repeal any regulations that do not align with the “single, best meaning” of the authorizing statute. Additionally, agencies must eliminate any regulations that relied on the Chevron doctrine for justification.

Among the rulings affecting EPA policies is the Sackett v. EPA decision, which “ended a twenty-year attempt by the EPA to enforce the Clean Water Act against landowners whose property was close to a ditch that flowed into a creek, which subsequently fed into a navigable, intrastate lake,” according to the White House.

The memorandum directs agencies to repeal any regulations that conflict with a “properly bounded interpretation of ‘waters of the United States.’”

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