President-elect Donald Trump announced Friday that he will work to end the “inconvenient” practice of turning the clocks forward one hour each spring, which he said is placing an unnecessary financial burden on the United States. Is.
Trump posted on his website, “The Republican Party will do its best to eliminate Daylight Saving Time, which has a small but strong constituency, but it should not happen! Daylight Saving Time (DST) is inconvenient for our country and It is too expensive.” , true social.
DST was adopted by the federal government during World War I, but it was unpopular among farmers rushing to bring produce to morning markets, and it was quickly abolished. Several states experimented with their own versions but it was not reintroduced nationwide until 1967.
The Democratic-controlled U.S. Senate introduced a bill in 2022 that would eliminate changing the clocks twice a year, like Trump’s plan, in favor of a “new, permanent standard time.”
But the Sunshine Protection Act calls for the opposite switch — moving to DST permanently rather than eliminating it — to introduce brighter evenings, and reduce trips home in the dark for schoolchildren and office workers.
The bill never reached President Joe Biden’s desk because it was not taken up in the Republican-led House.
It was introduced in 2021 by Florida Senator Marco Rubio, a Republican who is scheduled to join the incoming Trump administration as Secretary of State. He said studies have shown that permanent DST could benefit the economy.
Either way, a permanent time change would prevent Americans from turning their clocks forward in the spring and then setting them back an hour in the fall.
This practice is colloquially referred to as “falling forward” and “falling back”.
Calls to make DST permanent have grown in recent years, especially among politicians and lobbyists in the Northeast, where freezing conditions are common on winter mornings.
“It’s really simple. Reducing sunlight during the fall and winter is hurting the American people and it doesn’t help them,” Rubio said in a statement before the vote.
“It’s time we abandoned this tired tradition.”
Rubio said the United States saw an increase in heart attacks and road accidents in the week following the clock change.
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 U.S. Virgin Islands, which do not move into the summer.
(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)
