I’m in danger of falling out of love with Donald Trump. I was ecstatic when he beat Kamala Harris, delighted with his flurry of executive orders, particularly the one entitled ‘Keeping Men Out of Women’s Sports’, and thrilled by his appointment of Elon Musk as head of the Department of Government Efficiency. But his flip-flopping over tariffs and the resulting market turmoil has led to a smidgen of buyer’s remorse. At the end of last week, my pension pot was worth 10 per cent less than it had been a couple of weeks earlier.
But then he does something that reminds me of what it is that I like about him. I’m talking about the executive order he signed last week to ‘make America’s showers great again’. Low water flow has long been a pet peeve of the US President, who claims that a rule dating back to the Obama administration, restricting the amount of water that can pass through a shower head to no more than 2.5 gallons a minute, has left Americans unable to wash properly.
The US President isn’t wrong about the feebleness of American showers
‘I like to take a nice shower to take care of my beautiful hair,’ he said in the Oval Office, while signing the order. ‘I stand under the shower for 15 minutes until it gets wet. It comes out drip, drip, drip. It’s ridiculous.’
He overturned the law, which was designed to conserve water, during his first term, redefining what constitutes a shower head. Henceforth, the 2.5-gallon restriction would only apply to individual nozzles, not heads, which could comprise as many as eight nozzles. That meant people with ‘difficult’ hair like the President could blast themselves with up to 20 gallons a minute. But that tweaking of the definition was reversed by Joe Biden’s administration, which was anxious to reduce electricity consumption as part of its climate agenda. Apparently, heating water accounts for about a fifth of the average American home’s energy use.
You can argue the toss about how important it is to tackle climate change, but Trump isn’t wrong about the feebleness of American showers, which the White House describes as ‘weak and worthless’. When I lived in New York, the water flow in my shower was painfully low. There was even an episode of Seinfeld devoted to this, with Jerry, Kramer and Newman, who all lived in the same Upper West Side apartment building, becoming enraged when their shower heads are replaced to conserve water.
The restrictions don’t just apply to showers, but to lavatories, meaning they don’t flush properly. I like an old-fashioned British toilet in which you pull the chain and an entire tank full of water comes cascading down the porcelain, washing your sins away. In America, you press a button or push down on a handle and almost nothing happens, meaning you often have to flush several times, waiting an eternity for the tank to refill. I can understand why so many Americans find the process frustrating, forced to endure the ‘drip, drip, drip’ of what feels like a malfunctioning appliance.
Then again, Trump’s latest executive order may not have the desired effect. After he changed the definition of a shower head in his first term, few manufacturers took advantage of the opportunity to produce eight-nozzle super-showers, reasoning that most Americans would prefer to save money on electricity and water costs. I imagine the bathrooms at Mar-a-Lago will get new fixtures and fittings, as will the ones in the White House. But the standard showers in apartment buildings probably won’t change.
Needless to say, Trump’s critics say he’s mistaken about the 2.5–gallon limit being the cause of lacklustre showers. According to the Appliance Standards Awareness Project, a conservationist advocacy group, the reason is more likely to be bad plumbing or a build-up of limescale in the shower head. I’m not convinced. If I was still living in New York, I’d be scouring the shelves of Target for a multi-nozzle monster.
The other executive order that endeared me to Trump was the one in February ending the US government’s efforts to replace plastic straws with paper ones. Paper straws are another of Trump’s pet peeves that I share. As he pointed out, they often dissolve mid-use, turning into mush. I thought it was a masterstroke of his to sell ‘Trump’ branded plastic straws during the campaign – $15 for a pack of ten – which he marketed as a practical alternative to ‘liberal’ paper straws.
These idiosyncrasies won’t stave off buyer’s remorse for long if Trump’s trade policy plunges us into a global recession. But for the moment, they’re enough to keep me on side.
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