At a rally in Dayton on Saturday, President Trump defended data centers in Ohio, warning that blocking the tech projects would give China the upper hand. The remarks came as Ohio faces pressure over who should pay for the infrastructure needed to serve these massive facilities.
“There’s so much money to be made for Ohio. You can’t just turn them off. They’ll go to China,” Trump told supporters. He urged voters to back Republican Sen. Jon Husted and gubernatorial candidate Vivek Ramaswamy, asking the crowd to act as though he himself were on the ballot in the November 3 midterms.
Data Centers and the AI Race
Trump tied the data center boom to the global AI race, saying the US was ahead of China in what he repeatedly called “superintelligence.” He said China “doesn’t want to see us,” and “We’re beating China” in the technology race.
He also said his administration was taking “historic action” to make sure large technology companies behind data centers benefit surrounding communities. That claim sits alongside his warning that the centers would leave Ohio if the US turned them away.
The Ratepayer Protection Act
The main disagreement over data centers concerns who must bear the cost of the infrastructure required to support them. Utilities could be forced to construct new power plants, substations and transmission lines to handle the huge loads these facilities generate.
Husted’s legislation was backed by Trump, who said it would “stop data centers from raising electricity costs and require them to pay their own way.”. Nearly every Senate Democrat had voted days earlier to stop the measure, according to Trump.
He promised to put his signature on the Ratepayer Protection Act “into law immediately within 24 hours” should the Republicans come out on top.
State Pushback Across the Country
Across the nation, lawmakers from both parties have rallied against the rise in data center construction. Several states have put a hold on tax breaks or permitting, while other jurisdictions have moved to charge developers higher costs for connecting to the grid through special utility rates and requirements.
Households and other businesses can be charged for costs passed on by utilities, which spread these expenses across a larger rate base. Projects have drawn opposition in places where they sit near homes or depend on water supplies that are already stretched, due to water use, noise and their sprawling size.
Some observers have raised doubts about the large sums governments hand out to companies building facilities that can cost billions of dollars to construct yet end up employing relatively few people once work on them is completed.
| State Action | Approach |
|---|---|
| Paused tax breaks | Stop the financial incentives |
| Permitting slowdowns | Tighten approvals |
| Special utility rates | Require developers to pay their own way |
The president made his way to Ohio following visits to Texas, Oklahoma and Alabama earlier in the week. He calls the journey a brief swing ahead of the midterms, spanning just 32 days.
What This Means for Ohio
The struggle in Ohio does not center on whether data centers should be built at all. Rather, it concerns who bears the cost of the roads, the cables and the substations that support them.
Trump’s position is straightforward: keep the projects in Ohio, pass the Ratepayer Protection Act, and blame Democrats for voting against it. Husted’s push for the bill gives him a legislative goal.
It’s not settled who will foot the bill for the infrastructure, but the data centers keep arriving anyway. Ohio stays a place worth heading to, and the contest with China carries on.
Where the paper stands
The paper backs narrow rules against direct harm, such as forcing companies to disclose safety failures they hid, and is against federal licensing of AI and slowdowns that freeze today’s leaders in place and lock out whoever would have challenged them. The president’s pitch in Dayton — that data centers must stay in Ohio to beat China — rests on a familiar claim: the US leads in superintelligence and cannot fall behind. But the real fight is over who pays for the infrastructure these centers demand, and the paper wants that fight to favor the challenger, not the incumbent. Licensing and slowdowns only freeze today’s leaders in place and lock out whoever would have challenged them.
The paper would prefer state-level action that targets specific harms — like requiring developers to pay for their own grid connections — rather than a national rule that hands the market to the biggest firms. The reader should watch for proposals that treat data centers as a national security imperative while leaving the costs to ordinary households and local utilities.
Source material: “Trump defends data centers in Ohio, warns they’ll go to China if US turns them away,” the New York Post.
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