Trump's Promise to Halve Electricity Prices Fails as Rates Rise 18%
An analysis by Yahoo Finance finds that former President Trump's campaign pledge to reduce electricity prices by 50% within 18 months of his January 2025 inauguration has failed. Instead, U.S. residential electricity rates rose 18% through April 2026, with a 7.3% increase in the last 12 months alone—double the inflation rate. Key factors include surging demand from AI data centers, which added $6 billion to PJM Interconnection's capacity auction costs, and the administration's policy decisions such as paying TotalEnergies nearly $1 billion to cancel offshore wind projects and imposing tariffs on grid equipment. Utilities filed $9.2 billion in rate-hike requests in Q2 2026. Experts note that retail electricity rates are largely set by state regulators, limiting federal influence. The article concludes the promise was impossible to deliver.
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