Trump's AI Action Plan calls for relaxing regulation and encouraging exports of AI technology in the U.S.
The Trump administration has released a comprehensive 23-page document, titled "Winning the AI Race: America’s AI Action Plan," outlining over 90 policy decisions to be implemented over the next year, aimed at maintaining and enhancing American leadership in artificial intelligence (AI).
The plan centres around three main pillars: accelerating AI innovation, building American AI infrastructure, and leading in international AI diplomacy and security.
The first pillar, accelerating AI innovation, focuses on rapidly advancing AI development by removing regulatory hurdles and encouraging widespread adoption in both the private and public sectors. The government positions itself as both a catalyst and key customer, fostering a permissive environment by cutting bureaucratic "red tape," promoting open-source models, and prioritizing values like free speech, security, and workforce empowerment.
The second pillar, building American AI infrastructure, aims to enhance the nation’s AI capabilities through a substantial buildout of infrastructure, such as data centers and computing resources. This includes accelerating federal permits for data center construction and supporting the technology stack needed for advanced AI research and deployment.
The third pillar, leading in international AI diplomacy and security, emphasizes expanding the U.S. private sector reach overseas, promoting export of the full American AI technology stack to allies and partners, and asserting U.S. leadership in global AI governance. The plan favours securing America’s competitive edge through diplomacy and strategic international partnerships rather than restricting technology due to security concerns.
Key characteristics of the Action Plan include over 90 federal policy actions, acting primarily as a set of recommendations rather than binding directives, and relying on messaging and executive branch guidance over sweeping regulation or enforcement. The plan reflects a trend toward prioritizing deregulation and innovation, favoring industry growth and global competitiveness over imposing new guardrails.
President Trump wrote in the plan that "it is a national security imperative for the United States to achieve and maintain unquestioned and unchallenged global technological dominance." However, parts of the AI Action Plan could face legal challenges, specifically those targeting diversity, equity, and inclusion, and ideological bias.
The plan aims to position the U.S. as a leading global AI powerhouse by leveraging government support, reducing bureaucratic obstacles, involvement in international diplomacy, and facilitating private sector outreach. The first wave of changes under the AI Action Plan may come via executive orders issued by President Trump.
The administration will review Large Language Models (LLMs) to ensure that their systems are objective and free from top-down ideological bias. The AI Action Plan also includes creating AI incident response plans at the federal level, prioritising AI skill development to empower American workers, and amending the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) AI Risk Management Framework to eliminate references to misinformation, diversity, equity, and inclusion, and climate change.
Industry experts note the plan’s strong emphasis on cutting regulations to spur innovation and expand infrastructure, though questions remain about how some policies will be implemented in practice. The U.S. government plans to monitor and enforce these regulations on foreign exports, including monitoring emerging technology developments in AI compute.
For countries of concern, the Trump administration plans to strictly enforce export controls for technology needed for semiconductor manufacturing. Financing from the Development Finance Corporation and Export-Import Bank will be used to create AI export packages for "countries willing to join America’s AI alliance."
In summary, the Trump administration's AI Action Plan seeks to maintain U.S. global AI dominance by accelerating innovation, building robust domestic AI infrastructure, and leading internationally through diplomacy and export promotion, largely by minimizing regulatory constraints and encouraging private sector leadership.
- The Trump administration's AI Action Plan emphasizes policy decisions to foster AI innovation in both private and public sectors, aiming to remove regulatory hurdles and promote open-source models.
- The plan advocates for data center construction by accelerating federal permits and supports the technology stack required for advanced AI research and deployment.
- International AI diplomacy and security is prioritized in the plan, focusing on expanding the U.S. private sector reach overseas and asserting U.S. leadership in global AI governance.
- The plan positions the U.S. as a leading global AI powerhouse by leveraging government support, reducing bureaucratic obstacles, and encouraging private sector leadership, with the first wave of changes expected via executive orders.
- For countries of concern, the administration plans to enforce export controls for technology needed for semiconductor manufacturing and use financing from the Development Finance Corporation and Export-Import Bank to create AI export packages for potential allies.
