President Donald Trump wrote on Truth Social in late August that "the only reason that communities throughout the U.S.A. should not want Data Centers is if they want to end up being backwards and poor." The same post contained a specific promise: "If they want to be successful and rich, with far lower taxes and jobs all over the place, let Data Reign."
“If we kill the Golden Goose, you will only have yourselves to blame,” Trump added.
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Communities hosting large data centers do, in documented cases, see lower property tax rates. They also grant those buildings tax breaks lasting decades, and their residential electricity prices are rising faster than the national average. All three are true at once, and the public record is detailed enough to say so with numbers.
Let's start with the strongest evidence for the claim, which is Loudoun County, Virginia. Data-center computer equipment is budgeted to generate $794.8 million of personal property tax revenue there in fiscal 2026, against a general fund of $2.99 billion. The county's own published figures say data centers sit on about 4% of its commercial parcels and yield 38% of general fund revenue. Loudoun's real property rate has fallen from $0.980 per $100 of assessed value in 2021 to $0.805 today, the lowest in northern Virginia. The county also cut its vehicle rate from $4.15 to $3 and scrapped the $25 license fee. Its own 2026 illustration has a household with one home and two vehicles paying $141 more in property tax and $704 less in vehicle tax, a net cut of $563.
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Now the part that cuts the other way. Most large projects arrive with a long abatement on the taxes they would otherwise pay. Amazon's (AMZN) Amazon Web Services' New Carlisle, Indiana campus carries an $8.28 billion incentive package including a $184 million real-property abatement over 10 years and an 85% personal-property abatement worth roughly $115.6 million a year for 35 years. Its New Albany, Ohio site holds a 30-year property tax exemption: 100% for the first 15 years, then 75%, plus the incentives application listed 105 full-time roles. In Fulton County, Georgia, X received a $10 million abatement over 10 years on a $700 million facility; the county fact sheet cites 24 retained jobs. Statewide, Virginia's sales-tax exemption for data centers cost $928.6 million in fiscal 2023 and $1.94 billion in fiscal 2025 on the tax department's figures, though the state comptroller puts the 2025 number at $1.6 billion.
The same public record defends those exemptions. Virginia's legislative auditor ranked the data-center exemption the second-most productive of the five incentive categories the state offers — 84 jobs, $10 million of state GDP, and $6.1 million of personal income per $1 million forgone, with the state recovering $0.48 of every dollar through other revenue, against $0.17 for the average tax exemption.
On electricity, the direction is clearer. The U.S. Energy Information Administration's (EIA) residential price for Virginia was $0.17.22 a kilowatt-hour in June, up 13% on the year against 5% nationally. Ohio was up 9.7% while Georgia, which froze base rates through at least 2028, was up 2.5%. PJM's independent market monitor found that without 7,927 megawatts of data-center load, the 2025/2026 capacity auction would have produced $5.35 billion instead of $14.69 billion, a difference of $9.33 billion, or 63.5% of the actual result. That is wholesale capacity revenue across 13 states, not a household bill, and it is routinely misquoted as 63% of an increase.
Regulators are reallocating those costs already. Virginia's State Corporation Commission approved Dominion Energy (D) increases worth about $13.60 a month over two years for a 1,000-kilowatt-hour household in November, roughly 30% below what Dominion sought, and created a rate class, GS-5, for customers drawing 25 MW or more, with 14-year contracts and minimum demand charges, effective Jan. 1. Ohio's utility commission ordered AEP Ohio to build a data-center tariff with an 85% minimum demand charge and a 12-year term; it is under appeal at the state Supreme Court.
On "jobs all over the place," the gap is between building and running. Meta Platforms (META) says its Richland Parish, Louisiana project employs more than 7,500 trade workers at construction peak and will support 1,000 operational jobs. Microsoft's (MSFT) completed Mount Pleasant, Wisconsin facility used nearly 10,000 construction workers over two years and employs nearly 550 workers full-time. In a report corrected in January 2026 after the original overstated the figures threefold, Georgia's auditors counted 8,505 construction jobs against 1,641 operations jobs in 2025.
The backlash Trump's recent post responds to is measurable. Heatmap Pro counted more than 500 counties and municipalities restricting or blocking new builds as of late July, and more than 50 canceled data centers in 2026, while noting more than 90% of U.S. counties have done neither. Mark Cuban has argued from the other direction that the data-center fight is a proxy for something else entirely, and the builders keep expanding; SpaceX (SPCX) has told investors that data centers are its next front.
On the date of publication, Caleb Naysmith did not have (either directly or indirectly) positions in any of the securities mentioned in this article. All information and data in this article is solely for informational purposes. For more information please view the Barchart Disclosure Policy here.
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