Speech: Donald Trump Discusses the Ratepayer Protect Pledge at the EPA - July 23, 2026

Thank you very much, everybody. I heard about this group, and they said, could you come over and run over and say a few things. And I said, absolutely, I will. And they gave me the lowest seat I've ever sat in. [Laughter] You know, they said that they do that on purpose. I don't think it was Chris that did it; I'm just trying to compare.

Chris wouldn't do that, but it happens. It's really an honor to be with you, tremendous people, and it's a really important subject so I wanted to be here. I'll say a few words and then I'll head out and you'll handle it and it's something you're very familiar with. But the people in the room are real doers, real amazing.

It's an amazing group. We are here today to continue the incredible progress we're making in communities nationwide to ensure that as new data centers go up, and they're going up all over, electricity bills for American families will actually come down. You know, you're going to be building your own data centers and you're going to build -- building your own electric plants.

You're essentially becoming a utility like Con Edison in New York, but maybe at a level that nobody's ever seen before, because we've seen some of the plants that they're building are absolutely incredible. They're absolutely incredible, the electric plants, electric manufacturing plants. It's hard to believe, but you need double the electricity that we have right now, maybe even more than that, to really fulfill what you want to do; we're leading China by a lot.

And using our old grid would not have worked. And I came up with the idea that, you know, build your own plant, this way nobody can complain. You won't call me and say what a terrible job I'm doing because we have a 200-year-old grid that's not the best in the world. You look at some places, you take a look at California, you have brownouts and blackouts every weekend.

The last thing they're going to be able to do is supply electric at numbers -- nobody's ever explained to me why it's so much electricity, why you need so much, nor did I care that much, to be honest with you. All I know is you need more than double what we produce right now. Think of it -- so, we produce tremendous amounts of electricity for every business, and this industry needs more than double that amount.

So, we're letting you build your own with the Trump administration's Ratepayer Protection Plan, the American innovators and consumers thrive to win together because we're insisting that AI data centers and big tech companies pay their own way, and that's what they're doing. And they're happy to do it, because this way, they're going to be able to function and function brilliantly.

They're going to have a lot of electricity left over and they'll put that into the grid, so we'll actually end up with more electricity, the rates are going to go down. As president, I've always said that America's goal must be to dominate the future and that includes being the number one superpower in artificial intelligence -- so important.

And this is, I think, bigger than the -- frankly, I think it's bigger than the internet. It's bigger than anything anyone's seen thus far. Maybe someday there'll be something bigger than this, probably will. But I think up until this point, AI is probably the biggest thing anybody's ever seen. And whoever wins that race is probably going to win, period.

And again, we're leading China and we want to keep it that way. President Xi is coming over on September 24th, and we talked about it when I was over in Beijing, and we'll be talking about it again. But he was very impressed with the job we've done because ordinarily they don't have any problem with electric.

They build a lot of electric. They don't do environmental impact statements. They just say you want electric? We'll build it. They don't use too many windmills -- they make the windmills, but they don't use them. They do it the old-fashioned way in many ways. The United States never settles for second, and we don't under this administration, I can tell you that.

You see that because we are the hottest country right now anywhere in the world. We live by the motto America First, that's what's made us very strong. And we're leading China and all other countries by a lot in AI and just about every other category, including crypto. We want to stay in front on crypto.

They'd love to take that over -- so many other things they'd like to take over. They're highly competitive, if you haven't noticed. But thanks in part to this incredible technology boom, investments are pouring into the United States from all over the world, $19.2 trillion, creating hundreds of thousands of jobs.

So, think of it, $19.2 trillion in 12 months, OK? And the previous administration had less than $1 trillion in four years. I would say that's an improvement. Do I get credit for it? No. And no credit, think of that. It's $19.2 trillion in 12 months versus less than $1 trillion in four years, it's hard to believe, right?

But that's the way it is -- no credit, but we just keep chugging along. But as I say, I say I get no credit for anything. And then I look around the Oval Office I said, oh, but we're in the Oval Office. So, I guess we do get credit. But less than two years ago, our country was dead. And I've had this said by so many leaders; they use the expression a little bit different sometimes, said differently, but meaning the same thing.

They say, sir, less than two years ago your country was dead and now you have the hottest country anywhere in the world. And we are the hottest in the world. At the same time, we know that the data centers and AI are dramatically increasing the demand for electricity. It's only fair that the cost of building the new infrastructure required to meet this demand should be borne by the corporations themselves, not by the American consumers and the American patriots, American citizens.

And I think everybody agrees to it. And actually, they really don't have a choice, because there's no way of producing that kind of electricity, the kind you need, and they want to do it themselves. And honestly, they're coming up with some plans that are genius, just like -- just like they are. That's why earlier this year I introduced the Ratepayer Protection Pledge.

Under this groundbreaking plan, America's largest tech companies have formally committed to fund or build all energy infrastructure required to meet the demand they are placing on the grid. So, they're going to be funding all of those electric needs, and we're giving them the right to build their own power plants.

Lee Zeldin is here, he's phenomenal and he's getting it done quickly. Thank you. Stand up. Stand up. He is phenomenal. He's incredible. He's an MVP candidate, I will tell you. He is doing things at levels. And by the way, everything perfectly. He's totally into the environment, but he's getting things done in two, three, four weeks that used to take years and years.

And people are getting their approvals and they're building buildings. We're building more buildings now, plants and all sorts of manufacturing capability that we've never done anywhere near it, many, many times. And companies are pouring in. Toyota, the other day, as you know, announced that they're moving into our country from Mexico.

They're going to be, I think, closing up a lot of their operation, maybe all of it in Mexico. They're moving to this country. We have, uh, many cars -- we have more car plants being built now in the United States than at any time in history. And, you know, we went years before me, we went many years with no car plant being built.

I mean, they wouldn't even think about building in this country. Now we're a hot -- Same thing with chips. We'll have about 50 percent -- by the time this term is over we're going to have probably 50 percent of the chip market. A year ago when we began, we had no chip market. We had virtually none, other than Intel.

We had Intel, and we made a purchase of 10 percent of Intel. We got it for the right price and we made approximately $72 billion on that deal. So it was good. Do I get credit for that one, no. I get no credit, none. But we did that and we have -- we made a lot of great deals, I'll tell you. And we keep it going, too.

But Intel's been fantastic, one of the hottest companies anywhere in the country. And when we met them, they were really having very big difficulty. We worked with them. But the stock price has gone up many times. I think it's maybe the hottest or one of the hottest anywhere in the world. So it was an honor to do it. I love looking good, but we made a lot of money.

We made I guess over 70 -- $72 billion on that, profit. They've also agreed to invest heavily in local communities where data centers are built, supporting job training and local services. They're really spending a tremendous amount of money. In other words, to the governors in the room, you have great governors in this room, and these companies are spending tremendous amounts of money on the communities, the local communities.

So I think it's important that we tell the local communities that because other nations are trying to get us to slow down, and they are spending a lot of money on propaganda, on press, PR, trying to convince everybody that this isn't a positive thing. And if we don't do this, we're going to be left behind.

And even communities compared to other communities -- you have some communities that really want this. This isn't all negative stuff. This is -- you have communities that really want the data centers. And frankly, those are the smart communities because it means tremendous numbers of jobs, very little actual disruption.

And the ones that don't want it, you know, the happiest people in the world are foreign countries, number one and number two, other communities within our country, because they're begging for them to be there, and some of them are great communities, very, very, uh, forward-looking communities, very smart communities.

Since I introduced this plan just a few months ago, more than 220 utilities, tech companies, state governments and other partners have signed our ratepayer protection pledge. Electricity rates for 80 percent of the power distributed in America are now being kept in check by the plan. We have, uh, kept rates down, way down.

You know, we inherited the worst inflation in the history of America from the Biden administration. And as you know, last week, it was announced that inflation is way down. It's down more than it's been in over six years and other things are happening that are so fantastic. And when these -- all these buildings, plants, factories that we're talking about start opening up -- all I know is I'd like to be the next president because I'm going to make somebody look very good.

They're going to sit there and all this stuff is going to be opening, and they're going to be saying what a genius they are. That happened with Biden. I got cuts in medicine prices that statutorily took two or three years, and I got these tremendous cuts, and then they sat there and said, oh, yeah. They didn't even know where they came from, but I got them.

And this is going to be a much bigger example. You have all these plants that are going to be opening up over the next two years, sooner, but two years and somebody's going to look very, very smart and I hope you remember me, because what we've done is something that nobody thought was possible. For example, southern companies Georgia Power has frozen base rates for households until 2029. Is anybody here from Georgia Power?

Uh, there is a certain governor who's here, a certain governor who's here, too. Congratulations. Good job. That's a great job. I've heard about it. Congratulations to both and it's fantastic and Georgia the revenue from Google's data center construction is allowing them to eliminate property taxes entirely.

And that's what you call using it to your advantage. The numbers are so incredible. Nobody's ever seen. You know, all my life, the biggest building in the whole world was the Pentagon and you can fit 25 pentagons into some of these buildings, 25. And if you happen to be a community -- and there's very little disruption, they're just large.

They go on for miles. And frankly, if you like certain types of things, they're incredible to look at to see that we could do something like this but they also throw off tremendous amounts of money for the community. And when you look at Georgia and you look at the revenue, think of that revenue from Google's data center construction, allowing them to eliminate all property taxes.

Did you know that, Brian? That's not bad, right? So thank you very much. Great job. That's a great job. And you probably had some negative stuff, a little heat oh, we don't want a data center. Uh, usually, those are the people that actually want them and they'd like you not to build them because you know what?

If it doesn't go to you and if it doesn't go to Georgia, as an example, it's going to go someplace else and those people are very happy to get them too, the smart people. American Electric Power now projects that their customers will enjoy as much as $16 billion in cost offsets for consumers, thanks to their data center contracts, $16 billion dollars.

So think of that. That's cost offsets. In Iowa, Alliant Energy Data Center deals. Where are you? Alliant, Alliant, where are you? Are you here? Thank you. Uh, data center deals are allowing them to freeze electric rates for consumers for at least five years. So your rates are going to stay the same or lower.

In Louisiana, here's a guy looks like he's from Louisiana to me. Public school teachers in Richard -- So think of that, Richland Parish are getting as much as $50,000 in bonuses this year, thanks to a $27 billion project by Meta, that will also save local residents $2.6 billion on their electricity bills.

Their electricity is going down in less half. That's big stuff. That's big stuff, Mr. Governor, right? You didn't have any doubt about it. Here's a governor doing a great job. We have some really great governors in this room. With the Ratepayer Protection Pledge, we're creating a fair deal for everybody.

This is how we'll grow our economy, lower the cost of living, protect American consumers, and lead the world in AI and high tech all at the same time. We want to lead the world. And it is said, if you come in second, you're going to be second overall because there's never been anything big like this. There's never been -- like in Georgia, there's no other thing you can do to create numbers like you've created, Brian, both of you.

There's no other thing. You can do 100 different deals, 100. It is nothing close to what you've been able to do and why, they put a big, gorgeous new plant in a certain location. Big deal. It's so -- it's so incredibly positive. Unfortunately, there are some who would like to lead us down the opposite path, and I call them the radical left communists.

They call them socialists, but these people are communists actually more. I think it's a much more accurate term. Want to shut down all new development, kill our most successful industries, destroy hundreds of thousands of jobs, and surrender the AI race to China. And China, look, you know, I'm not blaming them I have a lot of respect for them.

I have a lot of respect for President Xi, but they represent China. We represent the United States of America, and they lobby against these things and they spend money on it and they want communities to reject them as much as possible because they'd like to be leading the race. But we're leading the race.

And unless we're very foolish and frankly, very stupid, we'll continue to lead the race, where we have a nice lead. A lot of people didn't expect that was possible. Perhaps even worse, the radical left's plans would not lower your electricity bills, but they would actually increase them very substantially, because you wouldn't have all of this money pouring in. You'd have, American energy would be far more -- expensive and regulating oil, natural gas and clean, beautiful coal, it would be the end of all of it -- be the end of all of it. It would be the end of -- frankly, it would be the end of great success for our country because we've never had anything like what's happening right now.

The -- I call them the Dumocrats because their policies are so bad. Look, think of it, no men -- we want no men in women's sports. Transgender -- they want transgender for everybody. Trans -- I call it transgender mutilation of your children for everybody. Open borders where the world can pour in, where prisons from all over the world are released into our country, and we've done a hell of a job in getting them out.

Murderers, 11,888 murderers led into our country under the previous administration. We've gotten a lot of them out; we're getting the rest of them out fast. But the Dumocrats in Congress want less energy, not more. And if given the chance, they'd send your prices soaring and inflation skyrocketing, which is exactly what would happen if you had somebody else sitting in the position that I am right now.

And just like we did with the Green New Scam where we were scammed, the whole country was -- I wasn't scammed, I got it right from the beginning. I got it from the first minute when I heard this crap, you know. They were saying wind was so wonderful, so wonderful except you couldn't watch your television.

They wanted to watch the debate, Donald Trump against Sleepy Joe Biden. Nobody could watch it because the wind wasn't blowing, remember that? Darling, I would like to watch the debate tonight. I'm sorry, the wind isn't blowing. That's one of the great scams of all time but, you know. If you dislike another country, let them keep building windmills.

They are going down; people are finally figuring it out. But we're not going to let it happen to this country. We're going to be -- we're going to use the kind of things that work and they're working better than anybody ever thought possible. So, experts have observed that the amount of energy a society produces is the single greatest indicator of its advancement as a civilization, its success as a country.

Think of it, when you think of the amount of energy produced, Lee. So, when you give those fast approvals, that's a positive thing; I want you to feel good. Yet instead of offering a positive version and vision for carrying American civilization to new heights, the radical left only wants to limit our energy consumption and rein in our American dreams.

We have the American dream. Until we came along the first -- we had a great first term. We had the greatest economy in the history of our country, and this economy will blow it away. We're doing very well against the Islamic Republic of Iran. We're doing extremely well. They would like to do something, but I say they're not ready yet.

They need more of the same. They're not ready yet, they've got some evil intentions. We cannot let them have a nuclear weapon. If we did all this that I'm talking about, about your data centers, isn't that important when they start blowing away communities one by one. We cannot let them, ever, even think about having a nuclear weapon.

And that's exactly what's happening, they'll never have a nuclear weapon. Under the -- thank you. And by the way, this should have been -- this should have been done by other -- they've been saying 47 years now for about three years. But they should have been done for 50 years by other American presidents or other countries.

Didn't have to be us but it seems to -- if we don't do it nobody else is. But I will, and nobody else has the capability to do it either. We built, in my first term, the greatest military anywhere in the world. And we're using it a little more than I thought, but that's all right. We had Venezuela that Chris is doing a fantastic job and we've paid for the cost of that war many times over.

We're taking millions and millions of barrels of oil, and it's going to Houston and Louisiana. You know that. You see those ships lined up. And again, we paid for that many, many times over. And we have a great relationship with Venezuela, and the people are happy in Venezuela right now, they can't believe what's happened.

We have the biggest companies, the biggest oil companies in the world, going in and doing business like nobody ever thought possible. And we're taking some, we should, and they're taking some. And, you know, it's very interesting that they're making more money -- Chris was showing me some numbers -- they're making more money, Venezuela, now than they've ever made before.

And we're making a lot too, and I think we're entitled to that. So, it was really something. We took it, it was a one-day war, took one day. People said, oh, we're going to be tied up there forever. And here, you know, we were in Vietnam for 20 years, lost thousands and -- hundreds of thousands of lives, but thousands and thousands of lives.

We were in Afghanistan for years. We were in all these wars that you heard about for years and years. We were -- you know, I called them never-ending wars. But we're in for four months and we -- I had a very sad day yesterday. I went to Dover, four great American patriots killed. That's 18 in two wars and one is too many, but it's 18. Whereas in Vietnam we lost 200,000. We lost thousands and thousands in Afghanistan, we lost thousands in every war, the Korean War, thousands.

And these wars all lasted for years. No, we want to get it over with and we want to do it right, but we have to do what we came to do and that's -- we can't let these people have -- they're very violent people, we can't let them have what they want, which is nuclear weapons. All of this success came from innovation and ambition and drive.

In this country we build the future fearlessly and confidently so that America always will be strong, prosperous, and dominant. And the other thing we're going to add to that, we want to be free, and we're going to continue to be free as long as we're smart. And we can't be hoodwinked, we can't be taken advantage of by people that say, you're going to have a free home, you're going to get free rent.

Everything's going to be free. What they don't say is a year later, everything is going to be -- end up in squalor, destruction and death. And also death for our country. So, we have to stop the threat of the communist rhetoric that you're hearing right now, because these people, they don't act -- I'm very happy a poll came out, it said they're highly educated but doing very poorly.

In other words, they're losers. [Laughter] They went to school, they got a good education, now they can't -- they don't know what they're doing. So, what they do is they complain about people like yourselves that have done so well. But we can't let the communist ideology even -- we don't want to even think about it for this country, it would be terrible.

So, we're joined today by some of the people helping to do all of the things that I just talked about, putting the Ratepayer Protection Pledge into action. And here with us is Secretary of Energy, Chris Wright, who's an outstanding person. Doug Burgum told me about Chris. I didn't know Chris. I wanted Doug to head up energy, and Doug said, no, there's one man that's better.

Who? Chris Wright. I said who the hell is that. Turned out to be this guy right over here and he's turned out to be incredible, really incredible. He's running Venezuela. He's running a lot of -- more than anybody has ever run before I think we can say, Chris, right? He's doing a great job, so we appreciate it. Thank you.

A friend of mine, the governor of Louisiana, Jeff Landry, popular guy, really smart, street smart and book smart, which is a rare combination, by the way. We have the governor of Nebraska, Jim Pillen, who's done a fantastic job. He's a very -- where's Jim? Is he around here someplace? Where are you? Hello, Jim.

You're looking good. You don't change much. [Laughter] You don't change much. How's Nebraska doing, good? Do they still like Trump in Nebraska? I think so, huh? We had a very good night two nights ago in a place called Arizona. We were 14 out of 14, and we're doing that kind of numbers in Nebraska. I think we're doing those numbers everywhere, and it's all based on common sense.

You know, we're conservative, we're this, we're that, whatever you want. The most important thing is we're people of common sense. We want to have strong borders, we want to have good education, we want to have low taxes, we want to have a great military. We're people of common sense and if you do that, you'll be very successful at politics.

Governor of Idaho, Brad Little. Thank you very much, Brad. Governor of Georgia, Brian Kemp. Thank you, Brian, great honor. Entergy CEO Drew Marsh. Drew, thank you very much, Drew. Thank you, Drew, great job you're doing. Southern Company CEO Chris Womack. Chris? There he is again. Chris -- I didn't know that was your name.

I just saw you; I said that's a smart guy because you did the -- you did that big job making people in Georgia rich, right? Meta President Dina Powell, who's been my friend. She was with me for four years in the White House and I called up Mark. I said you hired the right person; you got the right person.

So, great, Dina, we're proud of you. Columbia County Commission Chairman Doug Duncan. Doug? Thank you, Doug, congratulations, job well done. And Sheldon Jones of Louisiana's Richland Parish School District and thank you very much. Good job. You -- know him, don't you? Huh? Thank you. I heard you're doing fantastically well.

And again, Lee Zeldin, who's been so outstanding. So -- thank you. So I want to just, uh, I just want to leave you by saying that it's an honor to be here. I'm going over now to talk about various and sundry subjects. One is the Iran war. Again, we're doing very well, very, very well. I would say better than anybody expected could be done.

We've knocked out their Navy, their air force, all of their radar, most of their capability in terms of manufacturing. Their drones are down 84 percent, their missiles are down 91 percent. And, uh, I had a newspaper say they're in a stronger position today than they were four months ago. No, that's not the truth.

That's not right. I can't believe they're even allowed to say -- New York Times said, they're in a stronger position today they have no military, they have no Navy, they're done. They had 159 ships everyone's at the bottom of the sea. Their 212 airplanes, everyone is gone. They have no radar. They have no anti-aircraft.

They have no nothing, other than they're mean and they're smart and they still have some capability. But four months ago, trust me, they were much, much stronger. OK? I want to give you the non-fake news. Uh, but we're going to do that, and we're going to then have the Dodgers, the world championship Dodgers are going to be over at the White House.

They're going to be waiting. And I'll meet a man who's just about the best pitcher in baseball and just about the best hitter in baseball, and just about the best fielder in the outfield in baseball. And needless to say, I guess he had a game where he pitched an almost perfect game, and he had two or three home runs in that game.

And they said it was probably -- I said, you know, never seen that. Only Babe Ruth. Babe Ruth was a great pitcher and he was a great hitter but even the Babe didn't throw a one hitter and hit three home runs, which would make it, I would imagine, about the greatest game ever played. So we're going to meet him and all of the people of the Dodgers.

They won the world championship and we see the champions, the Super Bowl champions and the baseball and basketball, all of them. They like to come over to the White House. We're going to have a little thing in a few minutes. But I want to just thank everybody and we're really talking about the ratepayer protection plan.

To me, it's very important because you have to convince your community how great these things -- you can't fight it, you have to go with it, and you're going to have all that protection. And we're giving you automatic protection, but you're going to make a tremendous amount of money. You're going to reduce taxes, and you're going to have something that if you don't have it, everybody else wants it. So, uh, these are the smartest people.

Most of you, most of you in this room, we have a couple probably on the other side of things, they disagree, but I don't know how they can disagree. Your community and your state is going to become rich and there's very little disruption. And again, if you don't take all that money, somebody else is going to take it. You might as well do it yourselves.

So it's an honor to be with you and maybe I'll let Chris and Lee and the group and Jeff and, uh, Brian, everybody just take over, have a good free for all and, uh, figure it out. And if you have any problems, I'll come right back and I'll straighten those problems out. OK? Thank you. Great job. Thank you.

Thank you. Thank you very much, everybody.

You going to come to a football game with us?

Yeah, I will.

Thank you, Mr. President. I appreciate you. [Inaudible]