U.S President Donald Trump signs executive orders in the Oval Office of the White House, on Jan. 20.Evan Vucci/The Associated Press
Donald Trump might soon make his presence felt in your shower stall – although you could be forgiven, and perhaps thankful, for not noticing.
Contained in one of the many executive orders the new U.S. President signed late on Jan. 20 was a single paragraph declaring that henceforth, the U.S. government will “safeguard the American people’s freedom to choose from a variety of goods and appliances.” The order specifically cited shower heads, which have long preoccupied Mr. Trump.
“President Trump’s energy actions empower consumer choice in vehicles, shower heads, toilets, washing machines, lightbulbs and dishwashers,” the White House proclaimed in a statement.
This might seem underwhelming when compared with Mr. Trump’s other plans, which include sweeping changes to America’s public health and education systems, imposing stiff tariffs on trading partners and stopping all wars.
But while the vague directive, included in an order titled Unleashing American Energy, doesn’t explicitly say so, observers said it portends renewed efforts by Republicans to roll back appliance efficiency standards. Given the interconnectedness of the North American marketplace, that could influence product availability in Canada, and also future Canadian product efficiency standards.
National product standards effectively limit what can be sold by imposing minimum levels of efficiency performance (such as energy or water consumption) for a dizzying array of consumer products. Enthusiasts, including consumer and environmental advocates, assert that tightened standards have saved consumers heaps of cash while improving product quality.
Some prominent American conservatives disagree. The Project 2025 report, published in 2023 by the Heritage Foundation, a conservative think tank, recommended eliminating appliance standards altogether because they “reduce consumer choice, drive up costs for consumer appliances, and emphasize energy efficiency to the exclusion of other important factors such as cycle time and repairability.”
A U.S. rule introduced in 1994 permitted shower heads to emit no more than 2.5 gallons of water per minute. The Obama administration later closed a loophole by requiring multihead units to comply with the same limit. Mr. Trump, though, repeatedly complained about flow rates from shower heads: At a 2015 campaign rally, he said he couldn’t wash his hair properly.
“The President seems to have some pet peeves,” said Andrew deLaski, executive director of the Appliance Standards Awareness Project, an organization based in Boston that advocates for appliance, equipment and lighting standards.
“If you go back to his first term, he complained about light bulbs that made him look orange. He complained about toilets that he had to flush many, many times.”
In 2020, the Trump administration proposed to revise rules meant to conserve water and the energy used to heat it. Mr. deLaski said the government used “various gimmicks and tricks” to implement those rollbacks, for example by allowing single fixtures to feature multiple shower heads, or exempting dishwashers that completed a normal cycle within 60 minutes. However, those proposals were overturned after Joe Biden assumed the presidency.
Brendan Haley, a policy director at Efficiency Canada, a research and advocacy organization based at Carleton University, cited an “anti-backsliding” provision that restricts the U.S. Department of Energy from weakening existing standards, should Mr. Trump instruct it to do so.
“Because of that,” Mr. Haley said, Mr. Trump’s executive order “might not be as big of a deal as it might seem.”
Mr. deLaski cited the same rule, but added that the U.S. Congress has the power to reverse standards.
“One of the things that we could see would be actual legislation introduced in the U.S. Congress, with the President’s support, to reverse the standards,” he said.
“We certainly aren’t going to see any forward progress under the Trump administration, and I think they’re going to try damn hard to reverse existing efficiency standards.”
Canada has long sought to harmonize with U.S. standards, for example by adopting the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s voluntary Energy Star appliance labelling program. It’s used to determine eligibility for some government rebate programs.
Occasionally, Canada has gone its own way. It adopted a minimum 95-per-cent annual fuel utilization efficiency for furnaces in 2019, roughly a decade ahead of the U.S. target date. Ollie Sheldrick-Moyle, a program manager at Clean Energy Canada, pointed to incandescent light bulbs, “which were banned in Canada in 2014 and the U.S. in 2023.”
Mr. Haley said: “Canada has gone above the United States efficiency standards before, and it certainly can in the future.”
Overseas manufacturers, though, have a strong incentive to make a single product variant for the North American market. Some might be unwilling to tailor products to higher Canadian standards.
“You might find that in a number of cases, companies won’t want to make that additional expenditure for a market that is obviously substantially smaller,” said Mr. Sheldrick-Moyle.
It’s unclear to what degree equipment manufacturers welcome rollbacks. The Globe and Mail requested an interview with the Association of Home Appliance Manufacturers, which has offices in Washington and Ottawa, on Tuesday and Wednesday, but was unable to obtain one.
Manufacturers have often resisted tightening standards, arguing that they eliminate entry-level models, thus limiting consumer options. But the American Supply Association (which represents wholesale distributors, suppliers and manufacturers of plumbing products) opposed Mr. Trump’s earlier attempt to weaken shower-head requirements. The ASA argued that it would “cause confusion in the marketplace and negate significant investment costs the industry has taken.”
The National Electrical Manufacturers Association, which represents American electrical equipment manufacturers, has sought grants from the U.S. government for technologies that improve water-use efficiency, and has urged installation of energy-efficient technologies in federal buildings.
Mr. Sheldrick-Moyle said American manufacturers, such as plumbing fixture makers Kohler and Moen, might be reluctant to retool product lines to take advantage of lowered standards, given the risk of reversion by a subsequent government.