Photo: Gage Skidmore from Surprise, AZ, United States of America / Wikimedia Commons / CC BY-SA 2.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.0)
The president called data centers potentially 'bigger than oil' while pushing back against state-level moratoriums on new facilities
President Donald Trump threw his weight behind the expansion of AI data centers, arguing that communities willing to host them stand to gain jobs and significant tax revenue. His comments frame data centers as economic engines for local economies, a message aimed squarely at state and local officials who have been increasingly skeptical about the facilities popping up in their backyards.
Trump went as far as calling data centers potentially “bigger than oil,” a comparison that speaks to both the scale of investment flowing into AI infrastructure and the administration’s desire to position it as a generational economic opportunity rather than an environmental burden.
The economic pitch and the political friction #
But the sales job is getting harder. A growing number of state governors and local officials have raised alarms about the impact of massive data centers on electricity costs and land use. Some states have gone as far as imposing moratoriums on new data center construction, a move Trump criticized as a “terrible decision.”
To address the electricity concern, the administration introduced what it calls the Ratepayer Protection Pledge in March 2026, later expanding it in July 2026. The pledge requires major AI and tech companies to fund their own energy needs related to data center operations, rather than passing those costs along to residential ratepayers.
Regulatory streamlining and federal ambitions #
A July 2025 executive order streamlined federal permitting for data center projects, cutting through layers of bureaucratic review that had previously slowed construction timelines.
The ambition extends to creative repurposing of existing federal infrastructure. One notable example: a former uranium enrichment facility in Paducah, Kentucky, is being converted into an AI data center campus.
The national security framing is also central to the administration’s pitch. US officials have consistently argued that falling behind China in AI infrastructure would carry strategic consequences, and data centers are the physical foundation on which AI models are trained and deployed.
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