War And Uncertainty Cloud Trump’s Ai Pledge Rollout

President Donald Trump already faced a tough challenge in convincing American voters that he had a plan to shield them from the costs of powering the data center boom.

Then the bombs began falling.

The market jitters and fears of a wider conflict that followed Trump’s attack on Iran are certain to overshadow Wednesday’s White House signing ceremony with seven big tech companies, which are pledging to shoulder the costs of meeting artificial intelligence’s growing thirst for electricity.

And any long-term rise in U.S. natural gas prices — driven by a surge in American fuel exports to replace Europe’s interrupted supplies of Middle Eastern gas — would threaten to increase the cost of electricity, complicating Trump’s pledge to lower it. Republicans, for their part, largely dismissed energy cost concerns tied to fighting in Iran on Tuesday, highlighting a key divide with Democrats eager to make increased costs a midterm campaign issue.

Even without the war, experts in the energy markets expressed doubt that the tech companies’ promises can check fast-rising electricity prices. Six people familiar with the plan through conversations with industry and administration officials said it employs the White House bully pulpit to signal their preferred approach to tech companies and utility regulators, but is not enforceable from the federal level.

One complication is that electricity supplies are mostly regulated at the state level and managed across regions, using market structures that vary dramatically in different parts of the country.

"I don't know that it solves a lot,” said one of the people familiar with the agreement, who like the others was granted anonymity to discuss private details. “They're trying to take credit for going with the tide for a lot of what we're doing already."

Even so, executives of major tech players Amazon, Google, Meta, Microsoft, xAI, Oracle and OpenAI are expected to be at the White House on Wednesday.

Trump has given mixed signals about how many teeth the anticipated non-binding agreement would have. In his State of the Union speech Feb. 24, Trump said he plans to tell tech companies to “build their own plant and produce their own electricity,” in what he described as a “ratepayer protection pledges.” But at a Friday event in Corpus Christi, Texas, he said the agreement would be “mandatory.”

“I made it mandatory where they have to build their own electric power plant so they’re no longer taking out of the community,” Trump said Friday. “And any excess they give back into the grid, so the grid is actually going to be enhanced, as opposed to hurt.”

The White House hasn’t provided any further details on whether it intends to make these pledges binding, and there are still many outstanding questions heading into Wednesday’s event. A spokesperson for the White House declined to comment, but pointed POLITICO to statements made Tuesday by the president.

“If we have a little high oil prices for a little while, but as soon as this ends, those prices are going to drop, lower than even before,” Trump said during his meeting with German Chancellor Friedrich Merz.

Almost no U.S. electricity comes from oil. The biggest U.S. electricity source by far is natural gas, a fuel that the United States produces in abundance but also exports in enormous quantities.

The pledge will come at a critical time for the administration, as rising electricity prices have posed challenges for Trump’s economic agenda. Communities across the nation have increasingly opposed data centers over fears about rising electricity prices, along with concerns surrounding water consumption, and air and noise pollution. This opposition has turned into a winning issue for some Democratic candidates, who saw success in recent elections in Georgia, Virginia and New Jersey.

White House National Energy Dominance Council senior adviser Nick Elliot said the pledge aims to address both affordability concerns and the “insatiable demand” for energy to fuel AI.

“I cannot understate how many times we get questions from the West Wing on affordability. It is the single biggest thing,” Elliot said Tuesday at the Electric Power Supply Association conference in Washington.

Elliot said the pledge encourages tech companies to bring new electricity generation sources online to fuel data centers, rather than merely locate near existing power supplies — a move to ensure the grid adds supply as it accommodates energy-gobbling data centers.

He said the pledge would create space for tech companies to do business with electric utilities or to execute bilateral contracts with independent power providers.

That aligned with other people who told POLITICO the pact is expected to encourage tech companies to pay for additional sources to power their data centers, fund grid upgrades, and commit to minimum electricity purchases to prevent sudden spikes to consumer prices. Companies like Microsoft, Anthropic and Google have already made similar, voluntary commitments to varying degrees in recent weeks.