July 23 was a big day for Artificial Intelligence in America – the White House released America’s AI Action Plan, and then followed the announcement with the signing of three AI-related Executive Orders.
America’s AI Action Plan
On the morning of July 23, 2025, the White House released America’s AI Action Plan (the “Plan”), outlining 90 specific policy actions the Federal administration intends to take in the near-term in order to achieve “global dominance in AI”. This announcement followed President Donald Trump’s Executive Order, “Removing Barriers to American Leadership in Artificial Intelligence”, signed in January 2025, which revoked existing federal AI policies and ordered administration officials to create an action plan aimed at “sustain[ing] and enhanc[ing] America’s global AI dominance in order to promote human flourishing, economic competitiveness, and national security.”
The Plan identifies three priorities of the Trump administration, or key pillars of action, to: (1) Accelerate AI Innovation, (2) Build American AI Infrastructure, and (3) Lead in International AI Diplomacy and Security. It then describes action items across administrative departments and agencies related to each pillar. The Plan also emphasizes four key principles across these pillars:
- The need for the U.S. to remove unnecessary regulations and barriers that slow down domestic growth and development in the AI space.
- The importance of recognizing American workers as key stakeholders in the growth and development of AI.
- The need to create AI systems that are not ideologically biased or designed to achieve certain social agendas.
- The importance of preventing adversaries from accessing advanced AI technology, and the need to monitor and protect against bad actors’ uses of AI.
A brief overview of notable action items described in each pillar follows.
(1) Accelerating AI Innovation
Pillar One mandates regulatory relief around AI-development to enable the private sector to innovate and grow more quickly. Notable actions under this pillar include a mandate that federal agencies identify and eliminate or revise existing regulations that hinder AI development and adoption, consider state AI regulations in future federal funding decisions, and limit the FTC’s ability to investigate and interfere with AI companies.
Under Pillar One, the Plan also promotes Open-Source and Open-Weight models, promises future actions intended to expand AI literacy and skills development in the workforce, and prioritizes investments in “next-generation manufacturing”, “world-class scientific datasets”, and “AI interpretability, control, and robustness breakthroughs”.
(2) Building American AI Infrastructure
Pillar Two focuses on regulatory relief around AI-infrastructure development, again to enable AI innovation and growth, but specifically calling out reforms related to environmental permitting and emphasizing the need for more data centers and energy sources to be built in the U.S. Pillar Two also describes actions related to upgrading the U.S. power grid, revitalizing the domestic chip-manufacturing industry, and ensuring this infrastructure is designed and built with national security considerations in mind.
(3) Lead in International AI Diplomacy and Security
Pillar Three describes actions to ensure that the U.S. leads the globe in AI exports and influence. These action items call for the U.S. to export the full stack of AI technology, including hardware, models, software, applications, and standards, to allies and countries willing to join the American AI Alliance, while also strengthening export controls to keep AI away from national adversaries. Additionally, the Plan notes actions intended to counter Chinese influence in international standards, strategies, and AI governance frameworks.
In sum, the American AI Action Plan signals that the Trump administration will enact and enable fewer compliance burdens and less federal scrutiny over AI safety and ethics. Unlike the Biden Administration’s AI Executive Order, “Safe, Secure, and Trustworthy Development and Use of Artificial Intelligence”, which emphasized trustworthiness, bias mitigation, and consumer protections, the Trump administration wants to enable innovation in the market, and the U.S.’s geopolitical advantage, with an emphasis on growth and national security.
AI Executive Orders
Following the announcement of the American AI Action Plan, President Trump signed three additional Executive Order on July 23, 2025, each of which focused on a specific aspect of the Plan and again signaled the administration’s top priorities in AI development.
(1) “Preventing Woke AI in the Federal Government”
This E.O. emphasizes the need for the federal government to ensure AI models are truthful and accurate, and not subject to the “suppression or distortion of factual information”. President Trump specifically calls out “diversity, equity, and inclusion” as a “pervasive and destructive” ideology that can “distort the quality and accuracy” of AI output.
Under this E.O., agency heads are mandated to procure only AI models that are truth-seeking and ideologically neutral, and the Office of Management and Budget is directed to issue additional guidance to agencies within the next 120 days.
(2) “Accelerating Federal Permitting of Data Center Infrastructure”
This E.O. reiterates the administration’s intention to ease federal regulatory burdens that would hinder the fast and efficient build-out of AI data centers and other infrastructure, removing specific National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) and other environmental restrictions and allowing expedited permitting for qualified projects. It also states that federal land and resources, including loans, tax incentives, and grants, will be deployed to help this buildout.
(3) “Promoting the Export of the American AI Technology Stack”
This final E.O. directs the administration to establish the American AI Exports Program to support and promote the exports of “full-stack American AI technology packages”, which includes computer hardware, data storage, data pipelines, models, systems, and applications. More specifically, the Secretary of Commerce is directed to issue a public call for proposals from industry leaders interested in joining the program, the Economic Diplomacy Action Group is responsible for coordinating federal finance tools to support the program, and the Secretary of State must develop an export strategy that supports the program and its policy objectives.
Again, these three Executive Orders directly reflect the administration’s key priorities surrounding AI growth and development, and signal their intention to actively promote innovation in the space and remove bureaucratic burdens to the advancement of AI.
