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Donald Trump (born June 14, 1946) is an American politician and businessman serving as the 47th president of the United States since January 20, 2025, after previously serving as the 45th president from 2017 to 2021. In his second term, Trump has made artificial intelligence a centerpiece of economic and national security policy, replacing the Biden administration's risk-management framework with a posture his January 2025 executive order describes as sustaining and enhancing "America's global AI dominance" [1][2]. Signature actions include the revocation of Executive Order 14110, Joe Biden's 2023 AI safety order; the release of the AI Action Plan in July 2025; the appointment of venture capitalist David Sacks as White House AI and crypto czar; the announcement of the Stargate infrastructure venture; a series of reversals in AI chip export policy toward China and the Gulf states; and a December 2025 executive order directing federal pressure against state AI laws [3][5][24].
Trump was born in Queens, New York, and built his public profile in real estate and television before entering politics. He won the 2016 presidential election, lost in 2020, and defeated Kamala Harris on November 5, 2024 to win a second, non-consecutive term. His first administration also engaged with AI policy: Executive Order 13859 of February 11, 2019, "Maintaining American Leadership in Artificial Intelligence," launched the American AI Initiative, an early national AI strategy focused on research investment, technical standards, and workforce development [4]. This article concentrates on the AI policy record of his second term.
On January 20, 2025, his first day back in office, Trump signed Executive Order 14148, a blanket rescission order that revoked dozens of Biden-era directives, including Executive Order 14110 on safe, secure, and trustworthy AI [3]. Three days later he signed Executive Order 14179, "Removing Barriers to American Leadership in Artificial Intelligence," which declared a policy of sustaining "America's global AI dominance in order to promote human flourishing, economic competitiveness, and national security." The order required agencies to review and suspend or rescind actions taken under EO 14110 and directed the assistant to the president for science and technology, the special advisor for AI and crypto, and the national security advisor to deliver an AI action plan within 180 days [1][2].
The administration carried the same message abroad. At the AI Action Summit in Paris on February 11, 2025, Vice President JD Vance said he had come to discuss "AI opportunity" rather than AI safety and warned against "excessive regulation"; the United States and the United Kingdom declined to sign the summit declaration endorsed by about 60 countries, including China, France, and India [8].
AI considerations also surfaced in the administration's handling of TikTok. On September 25, 2025, Trump signed an executive order, "Saving TikTok While Protecting National Security," determining that a proposed joint venture satisfied the 2024 divest-or-ban statute [13]. Under agreements signed in December 2025, Oracle, Silver Lake, and Abu Dhabi's MGX each took 15 percent of a new US entity, ByteDance retained 19.9 percent, and a copy of TikTok's recommendation algorithm was to be licensed, retrained exclusively on US user data, and overseen by Oracle as security provider; the deal was expected to close on January 22, 2026 [13][14].
Trump's second-term AI directives span deregulation, education, procurement, infrastructure, science, and federalism [1][6][11][12][13][24].
| Date | Order | AI focus |
|---|---|---|
| Jan 20, 2025 | Initial Rescissions of Harmful Executive Orders and Actions (EO 14148) | Revoked EO 14110, the Biden administration's 2023 AI order |
| Jan 23, 2025 | Removing Barriers to American Leadership in AI (EO 14179) | Declared a "global AI dominance" policy; ordered an action plan within 180 days |
| Apr 23, 2025 | Advancing Artificial Intelligence Education for American Youth (EO 14277) | White House Task Force on AI Education; Presidential AI Challenge; AI apprenticeships |
| Jul 23, 2025 | Accelerating Federal Permitting of Data Center Infrastructure (EO 14318) | Streamlined permitting for data centers above 100 megawatts and $500 million |
| Jul 23, 2025 | Preventing Woke AI in the Federal Government (EO 14319) | "Unbiased AI Principles" of truth-seeking and ideological neutrality for federal LLM procurement |
| Jul 23, 2025 | Promoting the Export of the American AI Technology Stack (EO 14320) | Program to package and promote full-stack American AI exports |
| Sep 25, 2025 | Saving TikTok While Protecting National Security | Declared the proposed TikTok joint venture a qualified divestiture |
| Nov 24, 2025 | Launching the Genesis Mission | Department of Energy initiative applying AI to scientific research |
| Dec 11, 2025 | Ensuring a National Policy Framework for Artificial Intelligence (EO 14365) | Legal and funding pressure against state AI laws |
The April 2025 education order established a White House Task Force on Artificial Intelligence Education, created a Presidential AI Challenge for students, and directed agencies to expand K-12 AI coursework and registered apprenticeships in AI fields [11]. EO 14319 requires federal agencies to procure only large language models that satisfy two "Unbiased AI Principles," truth-seeking and ideological neutrality, and singles out diversity, equity, and inclusion concepts as disqualifying "ideological dogmas" [6][7].
On July 23, 2025, the White House released "Winning the Race: America's AI Action Plan," the document required by EO 14179. It lists more than 90 federal policy actions under three pillars: accelerating innovation, building American AI infrastructure, and leading in international AI diplomacy and security [5][6]. Recommendations include removing regulatory barriers to AI development, streamlining permits for data centers, semiconductor plants, and energy projects, expanding the federal role in workforce training, exporting the American AI stack to allies, and tightening some security measures such as export enforcement [5][6].
Trump announced the plan at an AI summit in Washington the same day, telling the audience the federal government would not procure "woke" AI, and signed the three accompanying executive orders on procurement, data center permitting, and AI exports [7]. EO 14320 established an American AI Exports Program to organize full-stack packages of US chips, models, and applications for foreign buyers [6].
In December 2024, between the election and the inauguration, Trump named venture capitalist David Sacks, a co-founder of Craft Ventures and co-host of the All-In podcast, as White House AI and crypto czar, a part-time special government employee role [15]. Sriram Krishnan, formerly of Andreessen Horowitz, became senior White House policy advisor for AI, and Michael Kratsios, chief technology officer in the first term, returned as director of the Office of Science and Technology Policy. Sacks helped shape the AI Action Plan and the administration's chip export stance; on March 26, 2026, he said his czar role had ended after he exhausted the 130 days permitted for special government employees, and he shifted to co-chairing the President's Council of Advisors on Science and Technology alongside Kratsios. The administration reportedly did not plan to appoint a successor czar [15]. For the Genesis Mission, Energy Secretary Chris Wright designated Under Secretary for Science Dario Gil, formerly of IBM, to lead implementation [12].
The administration repeatedly reworked semiconductor export policy. On May 13, 2025, the Commerce Department announced the rescission of the Biden administration's AI diffusion rule, a tiered global licensing framework issued in January 2025 that was set to take effect on May 15; Commerce called it stifling and diplomatically counterproductive [16]. The rescission coincided with Trump's May 2025 Gulf trip, during which a reported framework would let the United Arab Emirates import up to 500,000 advanced NVIDIA chips annually through 2027, roughly a fifth of them for Abu Dhabi's G42, while NVIDIA announced a partnership to supply 18,000 Blackwell chips to Humain, Saudi Arabia's new state-backed AI company [17].
Policy toward China swung several times. On April 9, 2025, the government told NVIDIA that exports of its China-market H20 chip required a license, leading the company to record a $4.5 billion charge in its first quarter of fiscal 2026 [18]. After NVIDIA chief executive Jensen Huang met Trump in mid-2025, the administration agreed to grant licenses; in August 2025 Trump confirmed an unusual arrangement under which NVIDIA and AMD would remit 15 percent of revenue from Chinese sales of the H20 and MI308 chips to the US government [19]. NVIDIA later noted the agreement had not been finalized or codified in regulation. The reversal drew a letter from 20 national security experts urging the administration to reinstate restrictions [20], while Beijing pushed back from the other direction: Chinese regulators summoned NVIDIA over alleged "backdoor" risks and told major firms to stop buying the H20, prompting NVIDIA to ask suppliers to pause production of the chip in August 2025 [21].
On January 14, 2026, the administration went further, easing exports of the more capable H200 to China on a case-by-case basis with a 25 percent surcharge paid to the US government; Trump said advanced chips could go to "approved customers." Blackwell-class and forthcoming Rubin chips remained excluded. Chinese companies reportedly ordered more than 2 million H200s for 2026, far exceeding available supply, with shipments expected from mid-February 2026 [22]. Administration officials, including Sacks, argued that selling US chips into China would slow the rise of domestic rivals such as Huawei [22].
On January 21, 2025, his second day in office, Trump announced the Stargate Project from the White House alongside Sam Altman of OpenAI, Larry Ellison of Oracle, and Masayoshi Son of SoftBank. The joint venture of OpenAI, SoftBank, Oracle, and MGX pledged to invest $100 billion immediately and up to $500 billion in US AI infrastructure over four years, with Son as chairman, SoftBank holding financial responsibility, and OpenAI holding operational responsibility; the first campus was already under construction in Abilene, Texas [9]. In September 2025 the partners announced five additional US data center sites, bringing planned capacity to nearly 7 gigawatts and more than $400 billion in committed investment [10].
The July 2025 permitting order directed agencies to fast-track environmental reviews and federal land access for qualifying data center projects exceeding 100 megawatts of new load and $500 million in capital investment [6]. On November 24, 2025, Trump signed the Genesis Mission order, a Department of Energy-led effort, described by the administration as comparable in ambition to the Manhattan Project, to build an integrated AI platform across DOE's 17 national laboratories and to identify at least 20 national science and technology challenges, with the stated goal of doubling the productivity of American science within a decade [12].
The administration and its congressional allies repeatedly sought to displace state AI regulation. The House-passed version of the 2025 budget reconciliation bill (the One Big Beautiful Bill Act) contained a 10-year moratorium on enforcement of state AI laws, but on July 1, 2025 the Senate voted 99 to 1 to strip the provision after bipartisan objections from senators, governors, and state attorneys general; Trump signed the bill on July 4 without it [23].
On December 11, 2025, Trump signed Executive Order 14365, "Ensuring a National Policy Framework for Artificial Intelligence," which characterizes "excessive state regulation" as a threat to a "minimally burdensome" national framework. The order directed the attorney general to create an AI Litigation Task Force to challenge state AI laws in court, instructed the Commerce Department to catalogue burdensome state laws, allowed agencies to condition discretionary grants on states not enforcing conflicting AI statutes, and called for a legislative recommendation establishing a single federal standard [24]. Attorney General Pam Bondi formally established the task force by memorandum on January 9, 2026; as of April 2026 it had not filed litigation against any state AI law, according to legal analysts tracking the order [25].
Reaction split along familiar lines. Much of the technology industry and its investors welcomed the deregulatory agenda, the Action Plan, and the infrastructure push, and NVIDIA's leadership lobbied openly for the China export relaxations [7][22]. Critics focused on three fronts. Civil liberties and technology policy groups attacked EO 14319: the Electronic Frontier Foundation called the "woke AI" effort "a civil liberties nightmare," and Brookings scholars argued the orders politicize AI by injecting an ill-defined ideological test into federal procurement [26][27]. National security hawks, including 20 former officials and experts who signed a July 2025 letter, contended that resuming H20 (and later H200) sales to China would erode the US advantage in AI compute [20]. The preemption campaign drew bipartisan resistance: the 99 to 1 Senate vote against the moratorium preceded EO 14365, which state officials and consumer advocates criticized as an attempt to nullify democratically enacted protections, and which legal commentators expect to face constitutional challenges [23][25].