NEW YORK (BLOOMBERG) -- President Donald Trump warned that a growing public backlash to data centers in the US poses an economic threat to communities that oppose new infrastructure needed to power artificial intelligence and risks giving China the upper hand in the AI race.
“The only reason that communities throughout the U.S.A. should not want Data Centers is if they want to end up being backwards and poor,” Trump said in a social media post Monday. “If they want to be successful and rich, with far lower taxes and jobs all over the place, let Data Reign.”
Shifting public sentiment against data centers is creating headaches for developers and emerging as a defining issue in the US midterm elections, with the competition for a key Senate seat in Ohio turning into a referendum on the sites. New York enacted a moratorium on hyperscale data centers and Texas has an effective freeze on new development.
Other US states and cities are weighing limits on data centers that would add more hurdles for an industry already struggling to secure power and equipment for the sprawling, energy-intensive facilities. Any construction delays would carry enormous implications for US tech companies, which plan to spend more than $700 billion on AI infrastructure this year, and the Wall Street investors backing them.
Opposition to data centers also represents a growing political challenge for Trump, who has put AI development at the heart of his economic agenda and pushed the rapid nationwide expansion of tech infrastructure as an engine of job creation. He’s also made preserving the US lead over China in AI a top priority for the administration.
President Donald Trump takes a question from reporters in the Oval Office of the White House on Aug. 10, 2026.Anna Moneymaker/Getty Images
Ahead of a planned White House visit from Chinese President Xi Jinping next month, Trump also pushed data centers as a significant measure to counter Chinese advances in the emerging technology.
“If we kill the Golden Goose, you will only have yourselves to blame,” Trump added in the post. “China could not be happier with this anti Data Center movement.”
OpenAI said in June that a group of ChatGPT accounts with ties to China had sought to stir up local opposition to data centers. The company acknowledged that the data center debate is real but also raised concern about foreign influence campaigns.
Trump’s post marked the latest White House response to voter objections to data centers as Democrats press affordability issues in their bid to win back majorities in Congress in November. Senator Bernie Sanders is among US officials calling for moratoriums on new data centers.
During the first three months of this year, at least 75 data center projects were blocked or delayed by local objections, according to research group Data Center Watch. Opposition has been prevalent in political battleground states like Michigan and Georgia, where 17 projects have been delayed or blocked, the data shows.
Tech companies are taking notice. Silicon Valley, previously accustomed to being feted with generous tax breaks, is now ramping up marketing, community projects and local outreach to try to stymie opposition.
Trump has, at times, acknowledged the backlash, backing an effort to encourage tech companies to promise to foot the bill of any hikes in electricity prices due to data centers. The so-called Ratepayer Protection Pledge is a non-binding agreement that’s supported by scores of governors, legislators, power utilities and data-center developers that have vowed to pay above normal electricity rates to fund grid updates.
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