Biden Admin Slaps New Rules On Air Conditioners, Critics Say It Hurts Low-Income Households

Critics have called the new rules tantamount to federal overreach
According to the Association of Home Appliance Manufacturers, the standards "too stringent and will have a negative, disproportionate impact on low-income households and historically marginalized communities."
In 2022, the group suggested that the DOE "reassess parts of its analysis with respect to proposed standards levels … and some of the assumptions upon which the analysis is based," adding "As discussed further below, DOE must conduct further analysis to determine how increasingly stringent standards disproportionately affect low-income households and historically marginalized communities, as required..."
As the Epoch Times notes, the new rules are anticipated to cost manufacturers around $82.1 million to implement.
"What these mandates, what these standards, do is enforce a level of efficiency that doesn’t make sense," Ben Lieberman, a fellow at the Competitive Enterprise Institute, told Fox News. "And they compromise product quality. We’ve already seen this to an extent with cost of clothes washer standards."
"That’s another problem—this is a regulatory program that’s very long in the tooth and you’re getting to the point where clothes washers—this might be the fifth time they’ve been regulated," Lieberman added. "So we’re really chasing after diminishing or nonexistent marginal returns."