(AFP) – President-elect Donald Trump announced Friday he would work to end the “inconvenient” custom of moving clocks forward one hour every spring, which he said was imposing an unnecessary financial burden on the United States.
“The Republican Party will use its best efforts to eliminate Daylight Saving Time, which has a small but strong constituency, but shouldn’t! Daylight Saving Time (DST) is inconvenient, and very costly to our Nation,” Trump posted on his website, Truth Social.
DST was adopted by the federal government during World War I but was unpopular with farmers rushing to get produce to morning markets, and was quickly abolished. Many states experimented with their own versions, but it wasn’t reintroduced nationwide until 1967. The Democratic-controlled US Senate advanced a bill in 2022 that, like Trump’s plan, would bring an end to the twice-yearly changing of clocks, in favor of a “new, permanent standard time.”
But The Sunshine Protection Act called for the opposite switch — moving permanently to DST rather than eliminating it — to usher in brighter evenings, and fewer journeys home in the dark for school children and office workers. The bill never made it to President Joe Biden’s desk, as it was not taken up in the Republican-led House.
It had been introduced in 2021 by a Republican, Florida Senator Marco Rubio, who is about to join the incoming Trump administration as secretary of state. He said studies had shown a permanent DST could benefit the economy. Either way, changing to one permanent time would put an end to Americans pushing their clocks forward in the spring, then setting them back an hour in the fall. Colloquially, the practice is referred to as “springing” forward and “falling” back.
The clamor has increased in recent years to make DST permanent especially among politicians and lobbyists from the Northeast, where frigid conditions are normal in the early winter mornings. “It’s really straightforward. Cutting back on the sun during the fall and winter is a drain on the American people and does little to nothing to help them,” Rubio said in a statement ahead of the vote. “It’s time we retire this tired tradition.”
Rubio said the United States sees an increase in heart attacks and road accidents in the week that follows the changing of the clocks. Any changes would be unlikely to affect Hawaii and most of Arizona, the Navajo Nation, American Samoa, Guam, the Northern Mariana Islands, Puerto Rico, and the US Virgin Islands, which do not spring forward in summer.
© 2024 AFP
