You may not have appreciated it at the time — golden eras have a habit of coming and going like that — but a five-year stretch that started in 2013 was a pretty great time to buy a washing machine.

Inflation for home laundry equipment, as measured by the Labor Department, fell steadily during that time, which meant you could buy the same washer your neighbor bought last year for less money. Or you could buy a better one at the same price. Great news for your clothes, though maybe bad news for your friendship, if your neighbor was the covetous type.

That stretch of laundry deflation ended last year, shortly after President Trump imposed tariffs, starting at 20 percent, on imported washers. The move was a response to a complaint filed by Whirlpool, a Michigan-based manufacturer.

The company has long dominated the washing machine business — many Americans have had Whirlpools in their laundry rooms for decades — but has recently faced stiffer competition from foreign manufacturers. Whirlpool claimed that foreign competitors like LG and Samsung were flooding the appliance market with washing machines from South Korea and Mexico at prices so low that they were hurting American makers.