President Donald Trump said on Wednesday that companies building data centres should pay a dividend to the surrounding communities. He said the money could go to the town as a whole or to local residents and would help win support for the projects.
Trump made the case in a Truth Social post as local opposition to the sites grows across the US. He also called on officials to approve more of them, AFP said.
“Data centers that were highly unpopular in a certain area, have become extremely popular when a financial deal is struck,” Trump wrote.
He ended the post with a direct instruction: “MAKE DEALS, and get them built!!!”
The post gave no figure for the payments, and Trump also did not say who would set them, or whether his administration would require companies to pay.
He first raised the idea on September 29, when he told reporters that people living near data centres could receive a dividend, Newsweek reported. He spoke on the same day he met tech leaders, including Nvidia’s Jensen Huang and Microsoft’s Satya Nadella, at the White House.
His opponents have proposed similar ideas. Senator Bernie Sanders has proposed an AI sovereign wealth fund that would make direct payments to Americans.
Earlier, Trump took a harder line: in an August 31 post, he said communities that turn data centres away risk becoming “backwards and poor.”
Data centres supply the computing power behind AI, and they have become a political issue in towns across the country. Local campaigns blocked or delayed at least 75 projects worth about $130bn in the first three months of 2026, according to Data Center Watch, which tracks the resistance.
Residents mainly object to the energy, water and land the sites use, and to their effect on power bills. The opposition also crosses party lines. In a September poll by The New York Times and Siena College, 47% of Republicans opposed building data centres for AI, as did 75% of Democrats.
Tech companies have already tried to win towns over. Microsoft has said it will stop asking for tax breaks where it builds, and more than 300 companies have signed a non-binding White House pledge to pay for their power.
Donald Trump has backed the building boom to keep the US ahead in AI. The fight over the sites has now reached the campaign trail, and data centres have become an issue in the November 3 midterm elections.
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