'You can't fight it': Trump defends data centers, signs up 23 governors to shield Americans from price hikes

President Donald Trump is bullish on American technology and keen to see America dominate the "global race for AI." He has, accordingly, become a champion of artificial intelligence data centers and has even tasked his administration with using federally owned land and resources to help develop them.

Trump emphasized during an event on Thursday at the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency headquarters in the national capital that opposition to the erection of data centers across the country is futile — but that consumers should not fear having to shoulder the burden of supporting such inevitable facilities.

'You have to go with it.'

In his State of the Union address in February, the president acknowledged that many Americans are "concerned that energy demand from AI data centers could unfairly drive up their electric utility bills."

Recent polls show that Americans largely oppose data centers. A Gallup poll conducted in March found that 71% of Americans somewhat or strongly oppose the construction of an AI data center in their area. A survey conducted this month by Public First found that 41% of respondents oppose building a data center within three miles of their homes, up from 28% in January, and only 24% of respondents support such an initiative, down from 37% at the beginning of the year.

To assuage such concerns, Trump announced in his SOTU speech that the negotiation of the "Rate Payer Protection Pledge," which has companies agree to: spare consumers from price hikes by building, bringing, or buying new power supply; paying for new power delivery infrastructure upgrades; paying special rates "whether they use the electricity or not"; and investing local job creation.

Within days of the announcement, Amazon, Google, Meta, Microsoft, OpenAI, Oracle, and xAI signed the nonbinding pledge.

On Thursday, Trump revealed that the pledge now has among its signatories 23 governors, various state legislators, numerous electricity providers, and data center developers.

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The three Republican governors who did not sign the pledge were Phil Scott of Vermont, Kelly Ayotte of New Hampshire, and Ron DeSantis of Florida. DeSantis ratified legislation in May to ensure that "local governments maintain the authority to reject data center development in their communities" and to protect Florida's water resources from data center consumption.

According to the White House, the pledge "now covers 80% of all power delivered to U.S. homes and businesses and protects 263 million Americans when a data center is built nearby."

After suggesting that adherence to the pledge and the construction of additional infrastructure to support the incoming data centers would actually drive down utility rates, Trump stressed that "America's goal must be to dominate the future, and that includes being the number one superpower in artificial intelligence."

"Whoever wins that race is probably going to win, period," he added.

Trump suggested that foreign "propaganda" might be partly to blame for those "communists" and others now opposed to having data centers in their back yards. According to the president, communities desirous of data centers "are the smart communities because it means tremendous numbers of jobs, very little actual disruption."

"You have to convince your community how great these things — you can't fight it. You have to go with it," said Trump.

"If you don't have it, everybody else wants it."