President Trump traveled to Pittsburgh on Tuesday to showcase more than $90 billion in private-sector investments expected to create tens of thousands of jobs and position Pennsylvania as a leading hub for energy, artificial intelligence and innovation.
Mr. Trump said the initiatives will help to offset China’s recent gains in the sectors during the Biden administration.
“Under the Trump administration, America is getting back in the game, and we’re going to actually be doing more than they do,” the president said.
The summit was hosted at Carnegie Mellon University, and at a time when Pennsylvania’s political and business leaders want to establish the city as a nucleus for robotics, AI and energy.
Mr. Trump has often talked about U.S. “energy dominance,” and Pennsylvania, a key swing state for Republicans that Mr. Trump won in 2016 and 2024, is looking at avenues to boost the state’s coal and steel industries.
The event comes in the wake of Amazon’s announcement of a $20 billion investment in data centers around Pennsylvania, the largest economic development project in the commonwealth’s history, and a $14 billion partnership between Nippon Steel and U.S. Steel to enhance domestic steel production and shield thousands of American jobs.
“The investments being announced this afternoon include more than $56 billion in new energy infrastructure, more than $36 billion in new data center projects, and a lot more than that are going to be announced in the coming weeks,” Mr. Trump said as he disclosed a $15 billion investment from Knighthead Capital Management to prevent the Homer City power plant from shutting down as a result of the Biden administration’s green energy regulations.
“The Homer City site is being resurrected as the largest natural gas-fired power plant ever to be built in North America,” Mr. Trump said. “Isn’t that fantastic?”
Mr. Trump said, “As another example, Google will be investing billions and billions of dollars to revitalize two major hydropower facilities in Pennsylvania.”
“Under the last year of Biden, China added 11 times as much power generation capacity as did the United States. That’s under Biden, that’s not under Trump, that’s under Sleepy Joe,” Mr. Trump said.
Sen. David McCormick, Pennsylvania Republican, a first-term lawmaker who organized the event, said Tuesday, “As the nation’s second-largest energy producer and a global nuclear power leader, Pennsylvania is uniquely positioned to deliver the abundant, affordable energy that growing AI and advanced manufacturing sectors demand.”
“I am proud to partner with President Trump and the business leaders here today to drive a new era of industrial growth that helps make America energy dominant while creating jobs and opportunities for working families across Pennsylvania,” he said.
At the summit, Mr. Trump met with some of the world’s top executives in energy and AI; leading global investors, key labor leaders and government officials. They included Larry Fink, chairman and chief executive officer of BlackRock; Alex Karp, CEO of Palantir, and Jake Loosararian, founder and chief executive officer of Gecko Robotics.
Administration officials attending the event included White House Chief of Staff Susie Wiles, Energy Secretary Christopher Wright, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent, EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin, Interior Secretary Doug Burgum, White House AI Crypto Czar David Sacks and Secretary of Commerce Howard Lutnick.
Mr. Wright, during a panel session, said the goal of the administration is to get the U.S. off the “energy crazy train” that first “left the station in Europe” 20 years ago. He blamed the Obama and Biden administrations, together with the corporate ESG movement, for sending U.S. energy policy “in the wrong direction.”
“Thank God President Trump won the election, and we’re able now, in short order, to just dramatically pivot their trajectory of American energy,” Mr. Wright said. “If we’re going to win the AI arms race, we need massively more energy, not standing in front of the way of our energy today. We have to add massively to our electrical generating capacity. We want to reassure manufacturing and industry to this country, and that’s all about energy.”
