President Donald Trump said on Sunday the United States holds a significant lead over the Chinese Communist Party in the artificial intelligence race while touting his administration’s ratepayer-protection pledge.
“This is a renaissance,” Trump said in an interview with his former attorney Michael Cohen that was released in full on Sunday. “We’re bringing back the medical business, we’re bringing back the automobile business, we’re leading China in AI by a lot.” Later in the interview, Trump heralded an update to the “Ratepayer Protection Pledge” from late July, which requires AI companies to “build, bring, or buy” their own power to ensure “America’s AI dominance will not raise electricity bills” for the public.
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“I’m letting them build their own power plants,” Trump said, referring to technology companies seeking to build the data centers that power AI models. “They’re not taking, these AI plants — which are very big — the power from the grid, because the grid doesn’t have the power, it’s old, it’s tired. They’re making their own power plants, they’re making the most beautiful power plants.”
Debates over data center construction and their effect on local electricity costs intensified this week after Gov. Josh Shapiro (D-PA) signed an executive order restricting data center development in his state. Polling that shows the public souring on data center construction and the AI industry writ large has forced lawmakers across the aisle to reconsider their AI policy positions in recent weeks and months.
The Trump administration has adopted a staunch pro-data center stance amid concerns that a lack of critical infrastructure could help China close the current gap between American AI models and their Chinese counterparts. Many Democrats, such as Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) and Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY), have called for stricter federal oversight and a nationwide moratorium on data centers.
“Frankly, communities that don’t take a data center — they’re making a mistake because there’s plenty of communities that want them because it means jobs and it means tremendous tax revenue coming into the towns and the cities that take them,” Trump said.
He also cited the need for putting “guardrails up” while reiterating that “smart” towns and communities are “saying, ‘I want them so badly.'”
