US President-elect Donald Trump will abolish daylight saving time in the US. “The Republican Party will do everything it can to abolish Daylight Saving Time,” Trump wrote on his online service Truth Social on Friday. The time change has a small, strong following, but “daylight saving time is inconvenient and very costly for our country,” Trump continued.
Although the president-elect has not elaborated on his position, it is not the first time that Trump has entered the debate. In 2019, after Americans lost an hour of weekend time to “advancement,” he posted on social media that “keeping Daylight Saving Time permanent is fine with me!” One problem with eliminating the time slots is that that Congress would have to decide whether to eliminate daylight saving time or keep it permanent – that is, whether to keep the hour of sunlight in the morning or in the evening.
A supporter of the permanent regulation is Trump's nominee for State Department, US Senator Marco Rubio of Florida, who has proposed a corresponding bill and called the change “stupid”. The legislation, which Rubio reintroduced in 2023, has 38 co-signers in the House of Representatives.
The issue has also caught the attention of the incoming government's newly appointed efficiency commissioners, Tesla CEO Elon Musk and biotech entrepreneur Vivek Ramaswamy. “Looks like people want to get rid of the annoying time changes!” Musk posted on X last month. “It's inefficient and easy to change,” Ramaswamy added.
