No one has ever accused President Trump of having a gentle touch on political rhetoric, and now, the administration’s position on data center development is on trial. Trump started the week by warning on Truth Social that communities trying to block data center projects risk becoming “backwards and poor.” Insulting local communities for their skepticism of data centers, whether for environmental or land-use reasons, isn’t helpful. The “backwards and poor” remark smacks of Barack Obama’s “bitter clingers” controversy, when the former president talked down about America’s old industrial towns.
Still, the President isn’t wrong here. While it wasn’t pollster-approved language, it’s true that communities that shut the door on data center projects are voluntarily locking themselves out of one of the most transformative economic opportunities of this century. Electricians and tradesmen are earning six-figure salaries in places like Texas and West Virginia—life-changing income even over a period of just a few years. Construction workers, security personnel, and maintenance crews have put up the largest Help Wanted sign in recent history.
Half of all rural counties in the U.S. have suffered in a slow, grinding population decline. Manufacturing plants have shuttered, and young adults migrate to major metros in search of work. Municipalities then struggle to balance funding essential public services, repairing aging infrastructure, and maintaining schools, while also facing the added pressure of not constantly raising property taxes on residents already struggling with rising costs.
The arrival of artificial intelligence and cloud computing offers a generational turning point to break that downward spiral.
The economic benefits are not theoretical or anything to brush off. In rural Louisiana, teachers are set to receive a $50,000 bonus because of a Meta data center in the area. In Loudoun County, Virginia, the tax revenue from data centers amounted to $1.1 billion last year alone. That money was used to invest in schools, better infrastructure, and emergency services. They even used some of that money to build a new Recreation Center just last year. According to a recent study by the Northern Virginia Technology Council, the state’s data center industry generated nearly $40 billion in economic activity in 2025, supported more than 112,000 jobs, and helped contribute over $1.5 billion in annual state tax revenue.
Given the approximate $700 billion in AI infrastructure spend this year alone, it’s not a surprise that rural areas are getting a closer look for potential locations for these projects. It’s reasonable for a community to want to weigh potential benefits against other considerations, but what other organically booming industries are there?
A blanket ban, like we have seen some communities and even the state of New York pursue, is not smart policy. If a county or a state turns away a data center project, it simply goes elsewhere.
In an increasingly competitive global economy, these decisions carry profound consequences. The United States and China are engaged in a race for technological and economic dominance on many fronts, including AI. Whoever can more quickly build out infrastructure to train and deploy next-generation models will have a significant strategic advantage—in everything.
The President was correct in saying that “China couldn’t be happier” about toxic discourse over data centers in the U.S. Last week, the safety team at X (formerly Twitter) posted about how they suspected Chinese accounts in an influence operation, identifying 200,000, 200 of which they felt were posting in a manner deliberately meant to manipulate the debate around American AI and energy policy.
China doesn’t need to defeat American AI companies in the marketplace if it can convince Americans to oppose building the infrastructure those same companies need to succeed. If projects face more resistance, bans, and delays, it slows our pace of technological progress and offers China the time it needs to spread its models around the developing world. The endgame is an unmovable anti-American bias in the most widely used AI models across the globe.
The President shouldn’t have characterized Americans who disagree with him on data centers as wanting to be “backwards and poor,” but he remains right about something far more important in that same post—there is an economic “Golden Goose” with its life on the line here. This isn’t a choice for localities between identity and economic growth—because when it comes to data centers, you can have it all.
James Czerniawski is the Head of Emerging Technology Policy at the Consumer Choice Center. His work has been featured in the New York Post, Newsmax, Newsweek, The Daily Wire, and more. Follow him on X @JamesCz19.