On July 23, 2025, the Trump Administration released a document entitled “Winning the AI Race: America’s AI Action Plan,” a national strategy aimed at securing U.S. leadership in artificial intelligence (AI). In a new insight, Technology and Innovation Policy Analyst Angela Luna walks through the plan’s promising policy proposals and explains the importance of congressional action to establish a national AI framework.

Key points:

• One of the plan’s objectives is to advance U.S. AI innovation by reducing federal regulatory barriers and putting pressure on states to refrain from passing their own AI laws.
• While some argue that reducing burdensome regulation and avoiding a patchwork of state laws is essential to creating a unified, innovation-friendly environment that promotes U.S. competitiveness in the global AI race, others caution that leaving key areas unregulated poses serious risks and emphasize the need for states to serve as laboratories of democracy.
• The administration’s AI Action Plan’s influence will be limited, however, without federal legislation; therefore, Congress should seek to create an AI framework that balances a light-touch regulatory approach with targeted safeguards to address specific harms that could arise from AI development and use.

Read the analysis.