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Trump Participates in a Roundtable on the Ratepayer Protection Pledge, Mar. 4, 2026

March 4, 2026 · The White House · 0:56:30

Embedded from the source channel — never re-uploaded. Watch on YouTube

What happened

President Donald Trump hosted a roundtable at the White House on March 4, 2026, at which, as he put it, “America’s largest tech companies officially signed the ratepayer protection pledge” — following through, he said, on the announcement made in his State of the Union address the week before. Under the agreement as the President described it, the companies commit to fully cover the costs of the increased electricity production required for their AI data centers, so that prices for American communities “will not go up, but in many cases will actually come down very substantially.” His original idea, he said, was “build your own power plant,” with fast permits to do it.

Energy Secretary Chris Wright framed the two goals as one: lead in AI — “the nation that leads in AI will be the military superpower” — and stop electricity price rises, which he put at 30 percent during the prior administration. He noted that a number of states partnering with the companies at the table had announced multiyear rate freezes, with Indiana first to file for a rate reduction. Staff Secretary Will Scharf closed the formal program: the President would sign a proclamation announcing the Ratepayer Protection Pledge, and each CEO and industry representative present would sign an actual copy of the pledge, committing them, as Scharf put it, “to your vision for this industry going forward.”

The President opened with a war update — the campaign against Iran “about a 15” on a scale of 10, as he rated it — before turning to the signing, and cited the Dow breaking 50,000 and the S&P reaching 7,000 within his first year.

Why it matters

This is the signing that created the Ratepayer Protection Pledge — the administration’s standing answer to the charge that AI data centers raise household electricity bills — with the pledge later tracked on this site as its signatory count grew. It is recorded on the Energy & Permitting hub.

Scoreboard watch

This is a candidate item for the weekly scoreboard: a signing (the proclamation announcing the pledge) plus the tech companies’ commitment, as described at the roundtable, to cover data centers’ added electricity-production costs, with state rate freezes and an Indiana rate-reduction filing as the first checkable follow-through. The scoreboard entry itself remains review-gated.

Sources: The White House, “President Trump Participates in a Roundtable on Ratepayer Protection Pledge,” The White House, March 4, 2026 (official upload, embedded above). All figures and characterizations as stated by President Trump, Secretary Wright, and Will Scharf at the roundtable.