Trump Promised to Cut Electricity Prices in Half Within 18 Months. That Deadline Has Arrived. Rates Are Up 18%.

Donald Trump pledged on the campaign trail that he would slash electricity prices in half within 18 months of returning to the White House. That self-imposed deadline is today, and — as with many of the president's promises — he appears to have fallen short of his goal.

From Trump's inauguration in January 2025 to April 2026, the most recent month for which government data are available, residential electricity rates have risen by an eye-watering 18%. From April 2025 to April 2026 alone, rates jumped 7.3% — about twice the rate of inflation — according to the Energy Information Administration.

For many consumers, there is not much relief in sight. Last week, PJM Interconnection, the nation's largest grid operator, announced the results of its annual capacity auction, which determined the cost to procure power for the 2028–2029 delivery year. The cost of the latest auction hit $16.4 billion, tying the previous auction's record-high price and all but locking customers into historically high rates.

Nationally, utilities in the second quarter of 2026 asked state regulators to approve $9.2 billion in rate hikes, up 26% from the $7.3 billion in rate-increase proposals filed in the same period a year earlier, according to Utility Dive.

Why This Was Always a Hard Promise to Keep

While it may be easy to place most of the blame on Trump given the brashness of his promise, the president inherited a slow-moving crisis of unprecedented load growth from the data-center boom, which coincided with the closure of coal and natural gas power plants. Together, this has driven rate hikes and warnings about grid reliability.

"It was an impossible promise to deliver on because there really isn't that much federal government involvement in retail rates," said Travis Fisher, director of energy and environmental policy studies at the Cato Institute. "It was always going to be a steep uphill climb."

The federal government — primarily through the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission — sets the rules governing interstate transmission lines and wholesale markets. But what consumers pay each month is determined by other factors, including fuel prices and the cost of building local distribution infrastructure such as poles and wires. States retain significant authority over many of the costs that end up on utility bills.

Trump's Own Policies Made It Worse

Trump does bear at least some responsibility. His trade war made critical grid components more expensive. Most transformers used in the U.S. are imported, primarily from Mexico and China; at one point goods from China faced a 147% import tax. Electrical steel comes from South Korea, India, and Japan, all of which were subject to "reciprocal" tariffs until the Supreme Court struck them down earlier this year. While those duties were in place, the investment firm Morningstar warned they "directly threaten the ambitious agenda to upgrade and expand the U.S. power grid." Even with them struck down, consumers are still paying for a 15% tariff rate the administration maintains on some electrical grid equipment, according to Utility Dive.

The administration has also made it harder for certain energy sources to connect to the grid. On Day 1, Trump blocked leasing for offshore wind in federal waters — a move a federal judge later struck down. In March, the administration began paying developers to abandon offshore wind projects instead, including nearly $1 billion to TotalEnergies to terminate planned projects in New York and North Carolina and redirect that money to fossil-fuel projects. Similar deals have since been reached to terminate four other offshore wind projects, according to The New York Times.

Fisher, who says he is "not a fan of offshore wind" because it "pretty much only gets built with subsidies and mandates," is also not a fan of these termination deals. He said these plants could have added "substantial downward pressure" and reduced PJM's auction price.

Meanwhile, data centers' electricity use added $6 billion to PJM's latest auction. As more Americans grow wary of data centers, some states have moved to restrict them: New York Gov. Kathy Hochul recently issued the nation's first moratorium on data centers, following a similar effort in Maine that passed the legislature but was vetoed by Gov. Janet Mills in April.

There may be better solutions than a moratorium. In March, Trump unveiled a Ratepayer Protection Pledge requiring signatories to front the cost of grid upgrades, water infrastructure, and power generation for data centers, though it has not yet made much of an impact. Some experts, including Fisher, advocate a Consumer Regulated Electricity model that would let large-load customers such as data centers connect directly to unregulated power plants independent of the grid — an approach New Hampshire has already adopted in adjacent form, and which Sen. Tom Cotton (R–Ark.) proposed making easier nationally in a bill introduced in January.

Such fixes could help the affordability crisis. But even they are unlikely to deliver the kind of relief Trump promised on the campaign trail.