Donald Trump faces significant obstacles after declaring in a series of executive orders last year that rapidly building AI data centers was among his top priorities to help the US win the AI race against China.
Perhaps to the chagrin of the president, his aggressive tariffs on Chinese imports are said to have hampered most data center projects.
Bloomberg earlier this week informed “Nearly half of US data centers planned for this year are expected to be delayed or canceled” because developers cannot import enough transformers, switches and batteries to create the power infrastructure each data center needs.
By 2020, these parts, which China had been producing for “decades” primarily for US manufacturers, were taking 24 to 30 months to arrive. Now they may have to wait up to five years, Bloomberg reports. The delay could be significant, as China is about five years behind the US in the AI race.
Trump would rather have the US manufacture its own equipment than rely on China. However, currently, “US manufacturing capacity for these devices cannot keep up with demand,” Bloomberg said.
Analysts at market intelligence firm Sightline Climate told Bloomberg that “only one-third” of the largest AI data centers expected to come online in 2026 are “currently under construction.” For firms “suffering” from the situation, many are willing to pay tariffs and take on alleged national security risks to try to get goods from China faster.
Trump seems to be avoiding this harsh reality. In March, he never mentioned the electricity infrastructure problem to order tech companies to “build, bring or buy” power for data centers. But data center builders can’t easily ignore that it doesn’t matter where the power comes from if there’s nothing to plug it into.
