President Donald Trump's trade and manufacturing adviser, Peter Navarro, said on Sunday that the White House may force data center builders to absorb their costs as voters continue to sour on the economy and utility prices soar.

"All of these data center builders, Meta on down, need to pay for all, all of the costs," Navarro said on Fox News' "Sunday Morning Futures." "They need to pay, not only pay for the electricity that they're using on the grid, but they have to pay for the resiliency that they're affecting as well. They need to pay for the water. So there's activity, action here going forward, where we force them to internalize the cost."

Navarro did not detail what the White House's plan to force data center builders to internalize costs would look like. CNBC has reached out to the White House for clarification.

When asked about Navarro's remarks, a Meta spokesperson said the company already pays for all of its energy usage. "Meta pays the full costs for energy used by our data centers so they aren't passed onto consumers — and we go beyond that by paying for new and upgraded local infrastructure as well as adding new power to the grid," the spokesperson said.

Data centers and their drag on utilities are part of the affordability problem. Electricity prices spiked 6.9% year over year in 2025 and show little sign of easing. Navarro sought to pin the blame for soaring costs on former President Joe Biden, who left office over a year ago.

"I just want to assure people that we're on it, we also feel your pain," Navarro said. "We understand the ravages that inflation took on you because of Joe Biden's irresponsibility, but we are addressing that with economic policy that ultimately will make wages rise faster than the inflation rate, and that's the key to affordability."

But Americans increasingly blame the Trump administration for rising costs. As the November 2026 midterms approach, polls consistently find Trump underwater on the economy. Democrats are pounding Trump and the Republicans on affordability, arguing that everyday goods and services have grown too expensive. Democrats have taken a 5.2 point lead in the generic ballot ahead of the November midterm elections that could loosen Trump's grip on Washington, according to polling averages from RealClearPolitics.

While Navarro sought to blame the former president's administration for Americans' struggle with affordability, Trump himself has said he's "very proud" of the state of the economy. In an interview with "NBC Nightly News" that aired during the Super Bowl on Sunday, the president was asked, "At what point are we in the Trump economy?"

The Trump administration has recently taken steps to address the strain on data center electricity and rising utility costs.

Several states and the White House signed a pact in January urging the nation's largest grid operator, PJM Interconnection, to make big technology companies pay for new power plants on the system. PJM operates the grid in some of the most data center-heavy areas in the U.S., including northern Virginia and New Jersey.