Trump’s New AI Executive Order Begins Undoing Biden’s Bureaucratic Mess
This analysis is in response to breaking news and will be updated. Please contact pr@rstreet.org to speak with the author.
On Thursday, President Trump signed a new executive order (EO) on “Removing Barriers to American Leadership in Artificial Intelligence,” which continues a busy first few days in office for tech policy-related actions. With this new EO, the Trump administration has rightly hit the reset button on artificial intelligence (AI) policy in the executive branch and helped steer the U.S. back toward a more prudent policy paradigm for AI.
Earlier this week, President Trump revoked President Biden’s October 2023 Executive Order 14110 on “Safe, Secure, and Trustworthy Artificial Intelligence (AI),” along with many other executive orders. Trump’s move satisfied the promise made in the 2024 Republican Party platform to repeal Biden’s executive order because it “hinders AI Innovation, and imposes Radical Leftwing ideas on the development of this technology. In its place, Republicans support AI Development rooted in Free Speech and Human Flourishing,” the platform said.
Trump’s resulting EO stands in stark contrast to the Biden EO and signals the return of a more light-touch approach to AI issues. Whereas the Biden order sought to unilaterally empower executive branch agencies to think ambitiously about how they might go about regulating AI, the Trump order does the opposite by looking to constrain the powers of the administrative state over algorithmic systems.
The Biden approach to AI, as articulated in their EO and major policy documents such as their “Blueprint for an AI Bill of Rights” and an accompanying list of “Key Actions to Advance Tech Accountability and Protect the Rights of the American Public,” was fundamentally fear-based. The AI Blueprint opened with a litany of frightening claims about how algorithmic systems are “unsafe, ineffective, or biased,” “deeply harmful,” “threaten the rights of the American public,” and “are used to limit our opportunities and prevent our access to critical resources or services.” Under the Biden policy statements and EO, AI was less about opportunities to be embraced and more about dangers to be avoided.
The Trump EO moves in a decidedly different and more optimistic direction by establishing that the policy of the U.S. government toward AI is “to sustain and enhance America’s global AI dominance in order to promote human flourishing, economic competitiveness, and national security.” It is an embrace of an innovation culture rooted in opportunity and growth.
Accordingly, many of the Biden administration’s AI policies are on the way out. “This order revokes certain existing AI policies and directives that act as barriers to American AI innovation, clearing a path for the United States to act decisively to retain global leadership in artificial intelligence,” the new Trump EO says. To follow through on that goal, the EO orders top administration tech officials to conduct a 180-day review to flesh out that vision more concretely while also removing much of the bureaucratic directives and systems created pursuant to the Biden EO.
“For any such agency actions identified, the heads of agencies shall, as appropriate and consistent with applicable law, suspend, revise, or rescind such actions, or propose suspending, revising, or rescinding such actions,” the new EO specifies. This specifically includes Office of Management and Budget (OMB) memorandums that the Biden administration used to encourage agency heads to take aggressive steps to micromanage AI developments, even though Congress still has not passed any comprehensive law providing statutory authorizing language to do so.
This presents the new OMB with the opportunity to revisit and reembrace the important groundwork the previous Trump administration already laid down on AI policy. In February 2019, President Trump signed Executive Order (EO) 13859 on “Maintaining American Leadership in Artificial Intelligence,” which launched the “American AI Initiative” to “focus the resources of the Federal government to develop AI in order to increase our Nation’s prosperity, enhance our national and economic security, and improve quality of life for the American people.” The previous EO also looked to “reduce barriers to the use of AI technologies in order to promote their innovative application while protecting civil liberties, privacy, American values, and United States economic and national security.”
Pursuant to that EO, the OMB issued an important January 2020 memorandum to heads of federal departments providing “Guidance for Regulation of Artificial Intelligence Applications” that, in addition to reiterating the Trump administration’s light-touch approach to AI policy, encouraged agencies to “consider ways to reduce barriers to the development and adoption of AI technologies” and “avoid regulatory or non-regulatory actions that needlessly hamper AI innovation and growth.”
The OMB added that “Agencies must avoid a precautionary approach that holds AI systems to such an impossibly high standard that society cannot enjoy their benefits,” and it also noted that agencies should look for ways to foster AI innovation and growth “through forbearing from new regulations” where appropriate and considering how to address “inconsistent, burdensome, and duplicative” AI-related laws promulgated by states and localities. Finally, that 2020 OMB memo stressed the need for agencies to be open to “non-regulatory approaches to AI” policy that include sector-specific policy guidances, voluntary frameworks and standards, and pilot programs and experiments.
As the old adage goes, if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it. The earlier OMB AI memo to agencies is precisely where the new OMB can start its new AI policy efforts. The earlier OMB vision set the right tone for AI oversight and very specifically instructed agencies on how to channel their efforts in a positive direction that is consistent both with the law and sound economic principles.
The problem is that it will be difficult to deal with much of the bureaucratic baggage left by the outgoing Biden crew. To recall, the Biden EO was one of the longest orders in American history and “stretches executive authority over emerging technology well beyond statutory limits and raises the danger of overregulation,” as I noted in testimony before a March 2024 hearing on “White House Overreach on AI.” Of particular concern to lawmakers at that hearing was the way the White House had used the Defense Production Act—a 1950s law meant to encourage production—as justification for an expansive, unilateral approach to regulating algorithmic innovation.
Put simply, President Biden pushed too far, too fast on AI regulation. However, some of his administration’s creations, such as the AI Safety Institute, which is now housed in the National Institute of Standards and Technology, will be harder to deal with. Some in Congress and industry want something like the AI Safety Institute to exist to help coordinate AI policy and standards, especially during international negotiations with similar bodies. But this is where the Trump administration should insist that Congress do its job and authorize such a new bureaucracy if they truly think it is necessary. And when Congress does so, lawmakers can specify the extent of its powers. This should not be something that the executive branch does without such authorization, as Biden tried to do.
Many other policies will remain from the Biden EO, some of which the Trump administration may ultimately retain. But for now, the Trump White House has properly recalibrated AI policy and returned it to a more sensible and constitutional footing. Where things go from here remains less clear, although 2025 will be an active year for Congress, the executive branch, and the states on AI policy.