I won’t say “there’s a lot to unpack here” because I hate people who say “there’s a lot to unpack here.”

Biden’s Green Rules Mean Appliances Will Soon Cost More and Do Less, Experts Say
Epoch Times | June 2, 2023 | Kevin Stocklin

Consumer advocate: New Biden regulations mean ‘Everyday things that people want are going to get more expensive or disappear’

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A pledge by the Biden administration in December 2022 to take “more than 100 actions” to impose significantly tighter environmental standards on consumer goods is now becoming reality, and consumer groups are predicting a future in which Americans pay more for products that do less, while manufacturers warn of shortages and supply chain breakdowns.

“You’re seeing, just in the last few months, new rules from the Biden administration about clothes washers, dishwashers, and other kinds of kitchen appliances, and in every case, you’re talking about a tightening of already very, very tight standards,” O.H. Skinner, executive director of the Alliance for Consumers, told The Epoch Times.

“That will make it so that nearly the majority of the current products on the market don’t meet the standards and have to be redesigned or removed from the market,” Skinner said. “Everyday things that people actually want are going to get more expensive or disappear, and the products that will be available will be more expensive but not better. People are going to wonder why life is worse.”

Wonder no more, Democrat voters. Wonder no more.

These actions follow a familiar pattern: rumors of new directives, followed by official denials, followed by draconian diktats. For example, reports that the Consumer Product Safety Commission would ban gas stoves over alleged safety concerns sparked a public outcry in January, which was met with denials by the Commission, together with media ridicule, that any such thing was being contemplated. This was then followed by new environmental standards from the DOE that would ban the manufacturing of 50 percent of the gas stoves available on the market today.

Sigh.

Among what one industry executive called “an avalanche” of new rules are regulations that force dishwasher and washing machine manufacturers to cut water use and energy consumption by one-third. In addition, new DOE rules would effectively eliminate 98 percent of all top-loading washing machines on the market today, would mandate that the machines be larger, and remove the central agitator that increases cleaning performance.

Manufacturers say these rules would add $200 to the cost of a washing machine…

“The regulations are legally faulty because they rest on poor reasoning and shaky facts,” Skrmetti said. “This kind of bureaucratic overreach lies far outside the scope of the federal government envisioned by the Constitution.”

“The ability to buy a car that can safely transport a family of five, that’s going to be an immense cost, way beyond what people are used to today,” Skinner said. “A lot of these $50,000 electric cars are basically sedans; when Chevy comes out with an electric Suburban, I shudder to think how many batteries you’re going to need for that.”

“Electric motors, transformers, electric vehicle chargers, generators, and other critical electrical equipment all require electrical steel due to its unique properties that reduce power loss,” they wrote. “Shortages of domestic electrical steel are contributing to significant and persistent supply chain challenges across our industries.

Increasingly, the United States is being forced to turn to China to fill the gap.

In addition, Hanke cites rare-earth minerals like neodymium, dysprosium and terbium, which are necessary to produce the magnets found in wind turbines and EVs. One 3-megawatt direct-drive wind turbine contains nearly two tons of these magnets, Hanke stated in a May 4 op-ed.

“Stunningly,” he writes, “China is responsible for 90% of the production of these rare-earth magnets.” The renewables transition is giving China the strategic leverage in minerals that OPEC has in oil production.

“If the U.S. insists on pushing China around in the sphere of critical materials, China can push back, and push back hard,” Hanke said. “As Deng Xiaoping put it in 1987, ‘the Middle East has oil; China has rare earths.’”