Trump signs executive order promoting export of the US AI technology stack

President Trump signed “Promoting the Export of the American AI Technology Stack,” one of three executive orders accompanying the White House’s AI Action Plan, alongside a companion order restricting federal procurement of AI systems the administration judged ideologically biased. Where that order addressed domestic purchasing, this one addressed international sales.

The order directs the Commerce Department to establish, within 90 days, an American AI Exports Program and issue a public call for industry proposals, while tasking the State Department with leading an Economic Diplomacy Action Group to coordinate export promotion across agencies. Proposals are to bundle a defined “full stack”: AI-optimised hardware such as chips, servers and accelerators; data pipelines and labelling systems; models and software; cybersecurity measures; and sector-specific applications in areas including software engineering, healthcare, agriculture and transportation. Target countries or regional blocs are to be identified case by case, and the government’s existing financing tools — direct loans, loan guarantees, equity investments and political risk insurance — are to be mobilised to support the deals, though the order set no new funding figure, leaving that to future appropriations.

The order did not name China, but its stated purpose was to reduce “international dependence on AI technologies developed by our adversaries,” positioning bundled US hardware-and-software exports as competition with Chinese firms making similar full-stack offers to the same buyers. It extended a strategy already visible in export-control policy toward China: rather than only restricting what left the country, the administration sought to actively promote what American firms could sell to everyone else, treating global market share in AI infrastructure as a contest the United States could still lose to determined competitors abroad.