Trump Urges Communities to Embrace Data Centers Despite Bipartisan Pushback

Despite bipartisan pushback against data centres in the United States, President Donald Trump has urged communities across the country to embrace the tech facilities, promising that they would bring jobs.

Trump said on Monday that China is happy with what he called the “anti-Data Center movement”, suggesting that growing disapproval of the centres in the US would divert businesses to the world’s second largest economy.

“The only reason that communities throughout the USA should not want Data Centers is if they want to end up being backwards and poor,” Trump wrote in a social media post.

“If they want to be successful and rich, with far lower taxes and jobs all over the place, let Data Reign.”

As more data centres open across the country, in part to power the growing use of artificial intelligence, the facilities have been met with scepticism – by both Republican and Democratic voters.

Data centres consume an enormous amount of electricity, raising concerns about the effect on the power grid, including possible outages and increased utility bills.

The Trump administration has backed a voluntary pledge by tech companies to entirely cover the price of their energy consumption. But consumer protection advocates have been calling for strict federal regulations around data centres.

Beyond electricity, environmental activists are ringing the alarm over the enormous amounts of water needed to cool down servers at data centres at a time when parts of the country are experiencing droughts.

Some residents living near data centres have also complained of the constant hum they emit.

A Gallup poll conducted in March suggested that 71 percent of Americans oppose establishing AI data centres in their areas.

The issue has gained steam across the political spectrum to the point where some pro-business Republicans are starting to express reservations about data centres.

For example, Republican US Senate candidate Mike Rogers – whose Democratic opponent in Michigan, Abdul El-Sayed, is a vocal critic of data centres – recently backed a one-year pause on data centres in the state.

El-Sayed has dismissed Rogers’s proposal and pushed to link the former Republican congressman to Trump’s all-out support for data centres.

The Democratic candidate has called for an indefinite pause on data centres until federal regulations are in place to require the creation of union jobs, ensure that utility bills do not increase, provide investments in the power grid and protect water resources.

After Trump’s post, Vice President JD Vance on Monday appeared to acknowledge some of the concerns around data centres. He said that while they are an “important part of the AI economy”, tech firms should establish power stations to support the facilities.

“If you build a data centre, you should be putting power back into the grid, not taking it out,” Vance said. “If that is happening, I don’t think data centres are that controversial.”