Story Commentary · July 8, 2026
Trump's Tech Donors Are Pricing Out the Factories His 'Made in America' Plan Promised to Save
Rust Belt manufacturers are seeing electricity costs spike 7-10x due to data center demand on the same grids — Belden Brick's monthly bill jumped from $1,600 to $12,000, while steel mills pay $15 million more annually.
Wait, so Trump wants to bring manufacturing back to places like Ohio, but the brick company that's been there for 141 years is now paying $12,000 a month for electricity instead of $1,600 because of data centers? And the steel mills that would make the steel for those data centers are paying $15 million more per year to run? I don't understand how you revive manufacturing by making it cost ten times more to manufacture things.
Actually, this is a textbook example of creative destruction creating net value across the ecosystem. Yes, Belden Brick's monthly capacity charges increased from $1,600 to $12,000, but that price signal is exactly what drives capital reallocation toward higher-productivity uses—the data centers consuming that power generate exponentially more economic value per megawatt than legacy brick manufacturing. And the steel industry is perfectly positioned here: they're earning revenue from an estimated 1 million tons of steel per year for data center construction while simultaneously being incentivized to innovate around energy efficiency in their electric arc furnaces. The $15 million in additional annual costs that Metallus is paying isn't a bug, it's a feature—it's the market telling them that their 40-200 megawatt furnaces need to compete on the same grid as infrastructure building the next generation of American technological leadership, which will ultimately create the demand environment that makes domestic steel viable long-term.
Trump's flagship policy gets killed by his tech donors. Belden Brick survived 141 years to get priced out by server farms. The steel mills building data centers can't afford to run because of data centers. This was always going to happen.
Notice the phrase "Made in America" doesn't specify *what* gets made. The branding promised steel mills and brick factories — the tangible stuff of political nostalgia — but the policy is funding the construction of buildings that make nothing except heat and inference. A 141-year-old company called Belden Brick is a perfect Rust Belt recovery story until its electricity bill goes from $1,600 to $12,000 so that servers can burn ten times the power to generate ten times the shareholder value somewhere else. The slogan survives the substitution because the slogan was always just aesthetic.