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Secretary Wright Discusses Hormuz Shipping, Data Centers and Electricity Prices on The National News Desk

July 14, 2026 · U.S. Department of Energy · 0:09:05

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What happened

On The National News Desk with Angela Brown, Energy Secretary Chris Wright was asked about escalating tensions with Iran over the Strait of Hormuz and President Trump’s announcement of a 20 percent charge on shipments through the strait alongside a renewed blockade. (The interview’s captions are Arabic-rendered auto-captions; this account paraphrases them faithfully.) Wright said the goal of controlling the strait is to let energy flow from all the Arab Gulf states except Iran — Iran, he said, is the problem, not the United States or anyone else — and that the U.S. military would control the flow of that traffic, allowing passage for everyone except Iranian traffic, as he stated it. Pressed on who would assess and collect the 20 percent and on what value, he said there had been an effective dialogue about the right course and that viewers would likely see news of a somewhat different approach to keeping the strait free-flowing while spurring U.S. job creation and higher wages, as he stated it.

Brown then raised breaking news that New York Governor Kathy Hochul was to sign an executive order imposing the nation’s first statewide moratorium on very large data centers for up to a year, which the governor said was to give the state time to set environmental and grid-protection rules. Wright agreed with Senator John Fetterman’s quoted reaction that China wins, saying that if the United States holds back or slows data-center development, China will win, as he stated it. He said green-energy mandates are what raise energy costs, that New York has expensive electricity and produces less of it today than 10 years ago, and that this is a New York energy-policy problem, not a data-center problem, according to his remarks.

Asked what the administration is doing to make data-center companies bear some of the costs, Wright described President Trump’s ratepayer-protection pledge, which he said the administration began implementing before it was announced: developers put money up front into communities to invest in electrical infrastructure and generation capacity, and all of them agreed to freeze electricity prices for several years, as he stated it. He said communities with modern data-center development have flat electricity prices for three or four years, ended price increases, new jobs and booming local businesses — while warning the model fails in states whose green mandates do not allow producing more electricity, according to his remarks.

Why it matters

The interview records the Energy secretary’s two-part test for data-center growth as he stated it: developers fund grid upgrades up front and hold local rates flat, while states with green-energy mandates that block new generation — New York in his account — lose the investment to competitors such as China.

Sources: U.S. Department of Energy, “Secretary Wright Joins The National News Desk’s Angela Brown - July 14, 2026”, 2026-07-14 (official upload, embedded above; published 2026-07-14). Transcript via Supadata (private research store, paraphrased and attributed, not republished). All figures and characterizations as stated by the speakers.