New Wave of Trump’s Deregulation Eases Rules on Shower Heads, Plastic Straws, and More

The president’s actions also target Biden-era limits on gas stoves, water heaters, washing machines, furnaces, and dishwashers.

Paper straws sit in cocktails at a bar in San Francisco on June 21, 2018. Justin Sullivan/Getty Images

President Donald Trump signed four executive actions on April 9 aimed at deregulating a variety of industries, including energy and kitchen and bathroom appliances.

While Trump signed the actions in the Oval Office, a White House official said one of the actions would effectively reverse a series of water-pressure regulations the Biden administration had instituted on products including dishwashers, toilets, sinks, and showerheads.

Trump criticized high-efficiency water faucets, suggesting they use the same amount of water as the products they intended to replace.

“It’s ridiculous. And what you do is you end up washing your hands five times longer, so it’s the same [amount of] water,” Trump said. “We’re going to open it up so that people can ... get all of these things, including straws.”

The president referred to a previous executive order that rescinded a Biden-era order calling for the end of plastic straws in federal agencies and said he would get Congress to memorialize that and his actions on Wednesday “because most of it’s common sense.”

Trump’s order on water pressure directs the energy secretary to rescind a federal rule that redefined “showerhead” under the Obama and Biden administrations, the latter of which had a 13,000-word definition, according to the White House.

The Trump administration will return to the definition found in the 1992 energy law, which set a 2.5-gallons-per-minute standard for showers. Trump’s order accuses past regulatory moves of making showerheads “weak and worthless.”

Previously, showerheads were redefined as “nozzles,” and multi-nozzle showers became illegal if they collectively discharged more than 2.5 gallons of water per minute, the White House said.

Trump’s order also targets Biden-era rules on gas stoves, water heaters, washing machines, furnaces, and dishwashers.

The president also signed an executive order directing 10 agencies and subagencies to insert a one-year expiration date into all existing energy regulations. If the window is not extended before the expiration date, all energy regulations will expire no later than Sept. 30, 2026.

“Agencies will extend only those regulations that affirmatively serve American interests. The rest will expire, resetting the regulatory landscape,” the order’s White House fact sheet states.

The affected agencies will also be required to include a five-year expiration date in future energy regulations unless they are deemed deregulatory.

Other Regulations Targeted

A different Wednesday executive order was aimed at clawing back “anti-competitive” regulations. It directs all agency heads to coordinate with the attorney general and Federal Trade Commission (FTC) chairman to review all department regulations and identify any that “impose anti-competitive restraints.”

“This includes regulations that facilitate the formation of monopolies, create or impose unnecessary barriers to entry, or needlessly burden agency procurement,” the White House fact sheet states.

The agency heads are also given 70 days to provide the FTC chairman and attorney general a list of all “anti-competitive” regulations, including proposals to “rescind or modify them as necessary.”

The president also signed a memorandum requiring federal agencies to rescind regulations that were deemed unlawful by 10 recent Supreme Court decisions.

The decisions, which affect policy areas ranging from the Chevron doctrine to Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) rules, are 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 directed to remove any regulations affected by these decisions expeditiously under the Administrative Procedure Act’s “good cause” exception.

The 2024 Loper Bright Enterprises v. Raimondo ruling notably overturned the Chevron doctrine, which determined federal courts should defer to a federal agency’s interpretation of an ambiguous statute that it had administered if the interpretation was deemed reasonable.

Trump’s memorandum calls for agencies to immediately repeal any regulations that are not consonant with the “single, best meaning” of the statute authorizing them. The agencies are also ordered to repeal any regulations that deferred to the Chevron doctrine and can only be defended by appealing to it.

Among the decisions affecting EPA rules is Sackett v. EPA, a 2023 ruling that “ended a twenty-year attempt by the EPA to enforce the Clean Water Act against landowners whose property was near a ditch that fed into a creek, which fed into a navigable, intrastate lake,” the White House said.

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