Artificial intelligence defines this decade and will shape the 21st century. This technology enhances our lives and our businesses through improvements in advanced manufacturing, education, health, and mobility. We already see a surge in productivity tempering inflation and boosting economic growth.
The open question: Who will win the AI race? Across many sectors, American businesses lead the world thanks to policies that allow innovation without asking for permission. That includes generative AI platforms, AI and cloud infrastructure, semiconductors, and more. AI produces strong capital growth with investments from venture capitalists, institutional investors, and public company boards. An unparalleled American innovation ecosystem, bolstered by new investments in AI training and education and highly skilled foreign workers, sets our country up for continued success.
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Still, we can’t rest on our laurels. We must get AI policy right, or we risk our national economic success and cede the ability to set the vision, rules, and norms for AI that protect democracy and individual rights and fight authoritarian rule amid rapid technological transformation.
President Donald Trump knows the importance of this moment. While the Biden administration viewed AI development as a problem to be managed, Trump sees AI leadership as a strategic imperative.
The administration’s AI Action Plan, released earlier this year, highlights AI as “an industrial revolution, an information revolution, and a renaissance — all at once.” His administration’s approach demonstrates both leadership and urgency, laying out a series of principles and policy actions to cut red tape, accelerate deployment, and let the private sector lead.
AI requires energy. The growth of AI, quantum computing, electric vehicles, and advanced manufacturing places unprecedented strains on our electrical grid. Trump’s energy strategy, including quicker and more streamlined permitting along with grid stabilization and optimization, will help deploy the energy infrastructure needed to meet the AI future.
AI changes jobs. Just as electricity, cars, recorded music, telephones, computers, and the internet changed our workforce while enhancing our lives, AI will affect current jobs and create new ones. The Trump administration’s focus on training and education, coupled with efforts to bring advanced manufacturing back to the United States, can create a future-focused workforce. At the same time, we can’t let fears around job loss, like recent unsuccessful efforts in Nevada to require drivers in autonomous trucks, slow innovation that benefits all of us.
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AI requires a national approach. In 2025 alone, state and local legislators have introduced more than 1,000 AI bills. While they were not all passed into law, Colorado will soon require large AI platforms to test for every possible harmful use. Imagine where we would be if telephone companies or internet platforms faced these standards! In fact, that law posed such huge hurdles for AI innovation that legislators already voted to delay its effective date by five months. As Trump explained in his speech launching the AI Action Plan, “if you’re operating under 50 different sets of state laws, the most restrictive one will be the one that rules.” He then called for the commonsense next step: a federal law on AI superseding state regulation.
Trump has it right: American-led AI innovation is driving new growth and opportunity across our economy. AI may boost the Trump economy even more than fracking shifted former President Barack Obama’s economy. But the power of AI isn’t just about its economic effect. It’s about national security, American leadership, and who sets the rules of the road for a technology that will shape the future. Trump’s leadership on AI will create a future of American prosperity for generations to come.
Gary Shapiro is CEO and vice chairman of the Consumer Technology Association, the trade association representing the $537 billion U.S. consumer technology industry. CTA also owns and produces CES, the world’s most powerful technology event.