From tech podcasts to policy: Trump's new AI plan leans heavily on Silicon Valley industry ideas

WASHINGTON (AP) — President Donald Trump on Wednesday unveiled a sweeping new plan for America’s “global dominance” in artificial intelligence, proposing to cut back environmental regulations to speed up the construction of AI supercomputers while promoting the sale of U.S.-made AI technologies at home and abroad.

The “AI Action Plan” embraces many of the ideas voiced by tech industry lobbyists and the Silicon Valley investors who backed Trump’s election campaign last year.

“America must once again be a country where innovators are rewarded with a green light, not strangled with red tape,” Trump said at an unveiling event that was co-hosted by the bipartisan Hill and Valley Forum and the “All-In” podcast, a business and technology show hosted by four tech investors and entrepreneurs, which includes Trump’s AI czar, David Sacks.

The plan includes some familiar tech lobby pitches. That includes accelerating the sale of AI technology abroad and making it easier to construct the energy-hungry data center buildings that are needed to form and run AI products. It also includes some AI culture war preoccupations of the circle of venture capitalists who endorsed Trump last year.

Trump signed three executive orders Wednesday to deliver on the plan. They seek to fast-track permitting of AI construction projects, expand U.S. tech exports and get rid of “woke” in AI.

Trump had given his tech advisers six months to come up with new AI policies after revoking President Joe Biden’s signature AI guardrails on his first day in office.

The plan prioritizes AI innovation and adoption, urging the removal of any barriers that could slow down adoption across industries and government. The nation's policy, Trump said, will be to do “whatever it takes to lead the world in artificial intelligence.”

Yet it also seeks to guide the industry’s growth to address a longtime rallying point for the tech industry’s loudest Trump backers: countering the liberal bias they see in AI chatbots such as ChatGPT or Google’s Gemini.

Trump’s plan aims to block the government from contracting with tech companies unless they “ensure that their systems are objective and free from top-down ideological bias.” The plan says the nation’s leading AI models should protect free speech and be “founded on American values,” though it doesn’t define which values those should include.

Sacks, a former PayPal executive and now Trump’s top AI adviser, has been criticizing “woke AI” for more than a year, fueled by Google’s February 2024 rollout of an AI image generator. When asked to show an American Founding Father, it created pictures of Black, Asian, and Native American men.

Google quickly fixed its tool, but the “Black George Washington” moment remained a parable for the problem of AI’s perceived political bias, taken up by X owner Elon Musk, venture capitalist Marc Andreessen, Vice President JD Vance and Republican lawmakers.

Chief among the plan's goals is to speed up permitting and loosen environmental regulation to accelerate construction on new data centers and factories. It condemns “radical climate dogma” and recommends lifting environmental restrictions, including clean air and water laws.

Trump has previously paired AI's need for huge amounts of electricity with his own push to tap into U.S. energy sources, including gas, coal and nuclear.

“We will be adding at least as much electric capacity as China,” Trump said at the Wednesday event. “Every company will be given the right to build their own power plant.”

Many tech giants are already well on their way toward building new data centers in the U.S. and around the world. OpenAI announced this week that it has switched on the first phase of a massive data center complex in Abilene, Texas, part of an Oracle-backed project known as Stargate that Trump promoted earlier this year. Amazon, Microsoft, Meta and xAI also have major projects underway.

The tech industry has pushed for easier permitting rules to get its computing facilities connected to power, but the AI building boom has also contributed to spiking demand for fossil fuel production, which contributes to global warming.

United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres on Tuesday called on the world’s major tech firms to power data centers completely with renewables by 2030.

The plan includes a strategy to disincentivize states from aggressively regulating AI technology, calling on federal agencies not to provide funding to states with burdensome regulations.

“We need one common sense federal standard that supersedes all states, supersedes everybody,” Trump said, “so you don’t end up in litigation with 43 states at one time.”

There are sharp debates on how to regulate AI, even among the influential venture capitalists who have been debating it on their favorite medium: the podcast.

While some Trump backers, particularly Andreessen, have advocated an “accelerationist” approach that aims to speed up AI advancement with minimal regulation, Sacks has described himself as taking a middle road of techno-realism.

“Technology is going to happen. Trying to stop it is like ordering the tides to stop. If we don’t do it, somebody else will,” Sacks said on the “All-In” podcast.

On Tuesday, more than 100 groups, including labor unions, parent groups, environmental justice organizations and privacy advocates, signed a resolution opposing Trump’s embrace of industry-driven AI policy and calling for a “People’s AI Action Plan” that would “deliver first and foremost for the American people.”

J.B. Branch, Big Tech accountability advocate at the watchdog group Public Citizen, which signed the resolution, called the plan a “sellout.”

“Under this plan, tech giants get sweetheart deals while everyday Americans will see their electricity bills rise to subsidize discounted power for massive AI data centers,” Branch said in a statement Wednesday. “Americans deserve an AI future rooted in safety, fairness, and accountability — not a handout to billionaires.”

Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang poses for a photo before President Donald Trump speaks during an AI summit at the Andrew W. Mellon Auditorium, Wednesday, July 23, 2025, in Washington. (AP Photo/Julia Demaree Nikhinson)

President Donald Trump speaks during an AI summit at the Andrew W. Mellon Auditorium, Wednesday, July 23, 2025, in Washington. (AP Photo/Julia Demaree Nikhinson)

President Donald Trump speaks during an AI summit at the Andrew W. Mellon Auditorium, Wednesday, July 23, 2025, in Washington. (AP Photo/Julia Demaree Nikhinson)

White House AI and crypto czar David Sacks speaks as President Donald Trump listens at an event for the signing of the GENIUS Act, a bill that regulates stablecoins, a type of cryptocurrency, in the East Room of the White House, Friday, July 18, 2025, in Washington. (AP Photo/Alex Brandon)

Bruce Perry, 17, demonstrates Character AI, an artificial intelligence chatbot software that allows users to chat with popular characters such as EVE from Disney's 2008 animated film, WALL-E, Tuesday, July 15, 2025, in Russellville, Ark. (AP Photo/Katie Adkins)

President Donald Trump arrives at an AI summit at the Andrew W. Mellon Auditorium, Wednesday, July 23, 2025, in Washington. (AP Photo/Julia Demaree Nikhinson)

Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang poses for a photo before President Donald Trump speaks during an AI summit at the Andrew W. Mellon Auditorium, Wednesday, July 23, 2025, in Washington. (AP Photo/Julia Demaree Nikhinson)

President Donald Trump speaks during an AI summit at the Andrew W. Mellon Auditorium, Wednesday, July 23, 2025, in Washington. (AP Photo/Julia Demaree Nikhinson)

President Donald Trump speaks during an AI summit at the Andrew W. Mellon Auditorium, Wednesday, July 23, 2025, in Washington. (AP Photo/Julia Demaree Nikhinson)

White House AI and crypto czar David Sacks speaks as President Donald Trump listens at an event for the signing of the GENIUS Act, a bill that regulates stablecoins, a type of cryptocurrency, in the East Room of the White House, Friday, July 18, 2025, in Washington. (AP Photo/Alex Brandon)

NEW YORK (AP) — Reviving a campaign pledge, President Donald Trump wants a one-year, 10% cap on credit card interest rates, a move that could save Americans tens of billions of dollars but drew immediate opposition from an industry that has been in his corner.

Trump was not clear in his social media post Friday night whether a cap might take effect through executive action or legislation, though one Republican senator said he had spoken with the president and would work on a bill with his “full support.” Trump said he hoped it would be in place Jan. 20, one year after he took office.

Strong opposition is certain from Wall Street in addition to the credit card companies, which donated heavily to his 2024 campaign and have supported Trump's second-term agenda. Banks are making the argument that such a plan would most hurt poor people, at a time of economic concern, by curtailing or eliminating credit lines, driving them to high-cost alternatives like payday loans or pawnshops.

“We will no longer let the American Public be ripped off by Credit Card Companies that are charging Interest Rates of 20 to 30%,” Trump wrote on his Truth Social platform.

Researchers who studied Trump’s campaign pledge after it was first announced found that Americans would save roughly $100 billion in interest a year if credit card rates were capped at 10%. The same researchers found that while the credit card industry would take a major hit, it would still be profitable, although credit card rewards and other perks might be scaled back.

About 195 million people in the United States had credit cards in 2024 and were assessed $160 billion in interest charges, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau says. Americans are now carrying more credit card debt than ever, to the tune of about $1.23 trillion, according to figures from the New York Federal Reserve for the third quarter last year.

Further, Americans are paying, on average, between 19.65% and 21.5% in interest on credit cards according to the Federal Reserve and other industry tracking sources. That has come down in the past year as the central bank lowered benchmark rates, but is near the highs since federal regulators started tracking credit card rates in the mid-1990s. That’s significantly higher than a decade ago, when the average credit card interest rate was roughly 12%.

The Republican administration has proved particularly friendly until now to the credit card industry.

Capital One got little resistance from the White House when it finalized its purchase and merger with Discover Financial in early 2025, a deal that created the nation’s largest credit card company. The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, which is largely tasked with going after credit card companies for alleged wrongdoing, has been largely nonfunctional since Trump took office.

In a joint statement, the banking industry was opposed to Trump's proposal.

“If enacted, this cap would only drive consumers toward less regulated, more costly alternatives," the American Bankers Association and allied groups said.

Bank lobbyists have long argued that lowering interest rates on their credit card products would require the banks to lend less to high-risk borrowers. When Congress enacted a cap on the fee that stores pay large banks when customers use a debit card, banks responded by removing all rewards and perks from those cards. Debit card rewards only recently have trickled back into consumers' hands. For example, United Airlines now has a debit card that gives miles with purchases.

The U.S. already places interest rate caps on some financial products and for some demographics. The Military Lending Act makes it illegal to charge active-duty service members more than 36% for any financial product. The national regulator for credit unions has capped interest rates on credit union credit cards at 18%.

Credit card companies earn three streams of revenue from their products: fees charged to merchants, fees charged to customers and the interest charged on balances. The argument from some researchers and left-leaning policymakers is that the banks earn enough revenue from merchants to keep them profitable if interest rates were capped.

"A 10% credit card interest cap would save Americans $100 billion a year without causing massive account closures, as banks claim. That’s because the few large banks that dominate the credit card market are making absolutely massive profits on customers at all income levels," said Brian Shearer, director of competition and regulatory policy at the Vanderbilt Policy Accelerator, who wrote the research on the industry's impact of Trump's proposal last year.

There are some historic examples that interest rate caps do cut off the less creditworthy to financial products because banks are not able to price risk correctly. Arkansas has a strictly enforced interest rate cap of 17% and evidence points to the poor and less creditworthy being cut out of consumer credit markets in the state. Shearer's research showed that an interest rate cap of 10% would likely result in banks lending less to those with credit scores below 600.

The White House did not respond to questions about how the president seeks to cap the rate or whether he has spoken with credit card companies about the idea.

Sen. Roger Marshall, R-Kan., who said he talked with Trump on Friday night, said the effort is meant to “lower costs for American families and to reign in greedy credit card companies who have been ripping off hardworking Americans for too long."

Legislation in both the House and the Senate would do what Trump is seeking.

Sens. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., and Josh Hawley, R-Mo., released a plan in February that would immediately cap interest rates at 10% for five years, hoping to use Trump’s campaign promise to build momentum for their measure.

Hours before Trump's post, Sanders said that the president, rather than working to cap interest rates, had taken steps to deregulate big banks that allowed them to charge much higher credit card fees.

Reps. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-N.Y., and Anna Paulina Luna, R-Fla., have proposed similar legislation. Ocasio-Cortez is a frequent political target of Trump, while Luna is a close ally of the president.

Seung Min Kim reported from West Palm Beach, Fla.

President Donald Trump arrives on Air Force One at Palm Beach International Airport, Friday, Jan. 9, 2025, in West Palm Beach, Fla. (AP Photo/Julia Demaree Nikhinson)

FILE - Visa and Mastercard credit cards are shown in Buffalo Grove, Ill., Feb. 8, 2024. (AP Photo/Nam Y. Huh, File)