Trump Launches Bid To Tame Electricity Prices In The Northeast

President Donald Trump mounted a dramatic intervention into the nation’s largest power market Friday, aiming to quell political headaches over rising electricity prices fueled by new data centers across a clutch of swing states.

The unprecedented move by the White House is an attempt to ensure one of the brightest spots in the economy — the surge in construction of data centers devoted to artificial intelligence — isn’t hamstrung by one of the biggest drags — the rising cost of energy.

It comes as polling shows voters are increasingly angry about rising costs ahead of the midterms that could threaten the narrow GOP majority in Congress. Electricity prices jumped by double digits in most parts of the country in 2025, far outpacing inflation.

At a White House meeting, the administration and bipartisan group of governors from the 13-state power market that stretches from Midwest to Virginia called on the electric grid operator to hold an emergency auction for tech companies to buy power for the next 15 years. That effort is designed to motivate power companies in that market to build a fleet of new plants to serve the rapidly growing AI data centers.

“We need to be able to build new generation to accommodate new jobs and new growth,” Energy Secretary Chris Wright said during the White House release of its plan. “And if we can build new generation in a sensible way, we can ultimately stop the price rise of electricity and grow job opportunities in the 13 state region."

The governors of Pennsylvania, Virginia and other states in that market have long feuded with the grid operator, called the PJM Interconnection, over its handling of power supply and demand mismatches that have spiked prices across the region. Others in the market include all or part of Ohio, Michigan, West Virginia, New Jersey, Maryland, Delaware and the District of Columbia.

Trump’s involvement Friday marks a major escalation and underscored how significantly power prices have dinged his popularity. Nearly two-thirds of Americans — 64 percent — said Trump has not gone far enough to reduce everyday costs, according to a CNN poll released Friday.

The White House claimed its moves would bring $15 billion of new power projects online. It said the initiative would limit price increases to residents by imposing a cap on prices and requiring data centers to pay for their own generation, whether they use it or not. It comes after Trump in a social media post Monday insisted tech companies pay their own way to power data centers, which Microsoft publicly agreed to do Tuesday.

Trump’s power play drew rare support from Democrats: Friday’s event at the White House was attended by Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro and Maryland Gov. Wes Moore — two blue-state leaders who are believed to be considering runs for the White House in 2028.

"What we have seen in our region is that PJM has been too damn slow to let new generation onto the grid at a time where energy demand is going up,” Shapiro said. “That is absolutely unacceptable, and that is what brings us all here today in common purpose."

The move is an attempt to reconcile Trump’s pledge to lower energy costs with his pledge to outpace China by dominating AI technology — a goal that his administration views as a national security imperative. But those goals have proven at odds with each other.

Coming after nearly two decades of flat electricity demand, AI and the energy-guzzling data centers it relies on have surged power needs and contributed to higher prices. That has posed a persistent political problem for Trump and Republicans, whose majority in the House shrunk to five earlier this week. The angst over rising electricity costs helped fuel successful gubernatorial runs for Democrats Abigail Spanberger of Virginia and Mikie Sherrill of New Jersey, who campaigned by tying higher rates to GOP policies.

While Moore praised the bipartisanship and shared recognition of the problem of higher costs, he drew a contrast with Trump’s policies that have favored fossil fuel power and punished renewables.

“We do need to have an all-the-above energy strategy, one that does focus on increasing aspects of solar and wind and nuclear," he said at the event.

Shapiro said at the White House event that the effort was a “partnership” with the Trump administration. He has been a vocal critic of PJM’s management of capacity auctions that he blamed for foisting higher costs on the region’s residents. The White House proposal extended a two-year price cap on PJM rates, a Shapiro priority.