Analysis
President Trump used Truth Social this week to attack the towns and counties that have voted down AI data centers, writing that communities opposing them are choosing to be "backwards and poor" and warning that China would be pleased to watch American localities turn the projects away. He described the industry as the country's "Golden Goose," Fortune reported.
The macro argument behind the post is not made up. AI-related computing infrastructure investment reached roughly 1.4% of US GDP in the first quarter of 2026, up from about 0.7% a year earlier. Information-processing equipment accounted for 39% of total GDP growth through the third quarter of 2025. Strip the buildout out of the national accounts and the growth picture for 2026 looks materially worse. That is why the administration keeps returning to the subject.
The Jobs Math Doesn't Work
The local arithmetic is where the argument breaks down, and it breaks down in public. Data centers drove roughly half of all US electricity demand growth last year, and retail power bills are up about 40% since 2021 -- the fastest run on record.
- PJM price impact -- roughly $23 billion in customer cost increases through 2028, per the grid operator's independent market monitor
- Lebanon, Indiana project -- about 4,000 construction jobs, roughly 300 permanent ones
- Virginia jobs-per-dollar -- one permanent job created per $54 million invested, versus roughly 17 jobs per $1 million across the broader economy
That spread -- enormous capital, thin permanent employment, visible utility bills -- is why the opposition is not partisan. Data center siting fights are now live issues in the Pennsylvania, Ohio, Texas, Wisconsin and Georgia governor and Senate contests, cutting across Gov. Josh Shapiro in Pennsylvania, Sen. Jon Husted in Ohio, Tom Tiffany in Wisconsin, and Keisha Lance Bottoms and Sen. Raphael Warnock in Georgia. At least 10 states now lose more than $100 million annually in foregone revenue from data center tax abatements, which turns every new campus into a line item local candidates can attack.
Microsoft, Amazon, Google, Meta and OpenAI are the companies actually filing the applications, and they have mostly kept quiet while the political fight escalates. The industry's answer so far has been to fund it out: a group called Build American AI, affiliated with the Leading the Future super PAC backed by Marc Andreessen, Ben Horowitz and OpenAI president Greg Brockman, is buying millions of dollars of ads in Kansas, Ohio and Wisconsin arguing the pro-data-center case directly to voters.
The counterweight the Truth Social post skips: the GDP contribution is announced capital and equipment purchases, not deployed capacity, and a meaningful share of it is chips and gear that depreciate on a three-to-five-year schedule. If model demand disappoints, the states that traded 20-year tax abatements for construction employment are left holding the grid upgrades. "Backwards and poor" is a poor description of a county assessor who noticed that the electricity bill arrives every month while the jobs arrive once.
The more interesting political question is whether any 2026 candidate wins on an explicitly anti-data-center platform. If one does -- particularly in Ohio or Georgia, where the siting fights are hottest -- the permitting math changes for every hyperscaler capex plan currently pencilled in for 2027 and 2028.
