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The chief executive of Siemens Energy called on the Trump administration to deliver more policy “stability” as the German maker of gas turbines and power grid equipment unveiled a $1bn investment in its US operations.   

Christian Bruch told the FT on Tuesday that the group would create 1,500 jobs in a big US expansion, tapping into surging demand for its products from the boom in AI data centres.

But while the US was an “excellent market” because of the AI wave, he said some of President Donald Trump’s policies had been “painful” for the company and customers, citing stop-work orders blocking completion of fully permitted offshore wind projects.

Work on five multibillion-dollar wind farms off the US east coast ground to a halt in December following orders issued by the Trump administration, which alleged their turbines could interfere with radar signals. US federal courts have since issued injunctions enabling all five projects to proceed, the latest of which was granted on Monday.

Siemens Energy makes turbines and components for wind developers including Denmark’s Ørsted, Spain’s Iberdrola and Norway’s Equinor.

“It’s obviously very challenging . . . It’s big installations. It’s not easy and straightforward. It’s nothing where you can switch on and off,” said Bruch. “Would I like more stability? Absolutely, yes . . . Luckily, a lot of the cost exposure is more with our customers than with us but still it requires a lot of planning and complexities to execute these projects.”

He added that Trump’s trade policies had also created difficulties.

“My bigger challenge on the tariff side is the stability of the tariff regimes. How to predict it? . . . It’s not so easy to shift, obviously, these supply chains around and when you then change a regime within six months it’s very difficult because changing suppliers takes you years normally,” he said. “It’s probably my major request, stability.”

Siemens Energy has been a significant foreign investor in the US for more than a century, and employs 12,000 staff across 25 facilities in the country. Its $1bn investment plan includes building a new electrical equipment factory in Mississippi and expanding existing plants in North Carolina, Alabama, New York, Texas and Florida.

The German company has rebounded strongly since a government-backed €15bn rescue package in late 2023. Its shares, having fallen below €7, are now trading at almost €150, buoyed by what Bruch described as the world’s “passion for electricity”.

Bruch said Siemens Energy was taking a prudent approach by expanding existing US facilities to meet visible demand resulting from the AI boom over the next few years rather than building many new plants.

While he acknowledged there would be volatility ahead, as some companies in the AI industry succeeded and others failed, he said he was “confident that the world will have AI in the years to come. I think there’s no debate about that. I’m not concerned about a bubble”.

Despite his request for policy stability, Bruch said the US market was “such a stronghold” that it would continue to attract investment. The Trump administration was also “super approachable” for Siemens Energy, he added, in part because the company was providing critical infrastructure needed to meet energy demand.

Bruch attended a reception hosted for Trump at the World Economic Forum in Davos in January, which was dominated by US threats to take over Greenland and impose tariffs on European allies.

“It was not an easy Davos. It was over-influenced by politics,” he said, noting that geopolitics had become more complex over the past decade and required greater attention from business leaders.

“I would have loved that we see less divide between the different political leaders, because we’re in a time when we need consistent joint action rather than debating about each other.”