This summer, the White House published “America’s AI Action Plan,” laying out a new vision for the regulatory environment around artificial intelligence.
At the federal level, “the immediate compliance burden for most U.S. companies will ease,” said Jana Farmer, a partner in the Intellectual Property & Technology practice at law firm Wilson Elser.
“This should translate into quicker access to frontier models, lower transaction costs in procurement and faster time-to-market for AI-enabled offerings.”
To find out what the new White House AI Action Plan means for the enterprises building AI capabilities, and for the businesses planning to use them, The Forecast interviewed three AI policy experts who shared their personal points of view. In addition to Farmer, The Forecast interviewed Reena Richtermeyer, a partner at CM Law whose practice focuses on AI, and Mircea Dima, founder and CEO/CTO at AI training organization AlgoCademy.
How We Got Here
Citing the “rapid speed at which AI capabilities are advancing,” former President Joe Biden in 2023 issued a landmark executive order calling for a “coordinated, federal government-wide” approach to promoting “safe, secure and trustworthy” development and use of artificial intelligence.
AI regulation appeared to be one of the policy’s primary objectives. “Harnessing AI for good and realizing its myriad benefits requires mitigating its substantial risks,” the order noted.
Upon taking office in January, President Donald Trump rescinded his predecessor’s executive order and issued Executive Order 14179, the stated goal of which is “removing barriers to American leadership” in AI.
The plan calls for federal deregulation to remove compliance burdens and accelerate AI development. It also promotes open-source, open-weight AI models to reduce vendor lock-in and support innovation.
Implications for Business
Stemming from Executive Order 14179, the White House AI Action Plan calls on federal agencies to repeal or revise rules that “unnecessarily hinder AI development or deployment.”
Big tech companies could benefit, as fewer regulations enable rapid deployment and global scaling.
“These firms already have massive datasets, computing infrastructure and talent. Deregulation allows them to release powerful AI models faster,” Richtermeyer said. “For tech giants, deregulation is a green light to scale at warp speed.”
He said startups and innovators also benefit.
“Without complex legal hoops, startups can iterate quickly and get products to market faster, potentially disrupting slower, regulation-bound incumbents,” Richtermeyer continued.
There are two sides to that coin, however, as a deregulated approach could also put businesses at risk.
“Lighter regulation can leave gaps around bias, transparency, intellectual-property misuse [and security],” Farmer said.
The plan’s other area of emphasis — easing access to open-source and open-weight models — “is a huge victory to startups and developers who have been locked out by the licensing barriers or confusion over compliance,” Dima added.
But there is some nuance in that area. While a stance that favors open-source and open-weight approaches “puts the White House in line with major private sector AI developers who see open-source as the best path forward,” Bloomberg Law reported in August.
“Adversarial powers could easily repurpose highly capable open-source systems, and malicious actors could weaponize these tools for cyberwarfare, disinformation, deepfakes and surveillance,” Bloomberg Law stated.
Impact on Global Competitiveness
Speaking of “adversarial powers,” the White House AI Action Plan emerges amidst a complex geopolitical landscape. With competitive advantage in mind, questions loom about how China and other nations may approach AI. At the same time, leaders in Europe and elsewhere are advocating for more safeguards.
“Americans have a tolerance for sustaining harms in an unregulated environment,” Richtermeyer said. “In the EU, the mindset is different. The preference seems to be to avoid such harms by proactively predicting and protecting against [them].”
China is more complicated, according to Richtermeyer. On the one hand, it tends to follow the EU’s “proactive tendencies,” she said. On the other hand, it has an aggressive R&D agenda, the aim of which may be less about unleashing innovation and more about accelerating AI “for the sake of power and control.”
It’s worth noting: Even as Washington takes its foot off the brake, businesses may still find themselves constrained by international safeguards.
“If American companies want to expand globally, they may have to consider early regulatory compliance in the development of their AI technologies so that future global expansion is not hindered by expensive or impossible retooling to comply with existing regulatory environments [such as the EU AI Act],” Richtermeyer said.
Although American competitiveness may initially “flourish” from deregulation, Richtermeyer continued, companies must tread with caution. “If American firms are perceived as ethically or legally lax, they could face barriers to market access, data restrictions or consumer backlash abroad,” she said.
That’s a significant point because the White House AI Action Plan promotes the export of American AI technology. In doing so, it “showcases how international trade and investment are crucial to the development of a strong U.S. AI market,” the Partnership on AI said in a July 2025 blog post.
“But as the importers of this technology, foreign governments get to decide whether it meets their needs, expectations and local requirements,” the blog post continued. “Therefore, to maintain its leadership in the global AI market, the U.S. will have to work together with other countries to find common ground on key principles of AI governance.”
Pros and Cons of Deregulation
With the White House AI Action Plan, the Trump administration has signaled its desire for a less-regulated AI environment. For AI developers and end users alike, there are pros and cons to that kind of environment.
On the upside, “reduced regulation might accelerate innovation, lower compliance costs and allow U.S. companies to outpace international competitors, especially in fast-moving fields like generative AI or autonomous systems,” Richtermeyer said.
“Startups and tech giants alike could benefit from a ‘move fast and build’ environment, giving them a temporary global edge.”
Less regulation could mean fewer rules, lower compliance costs and accelerated experimentation — all of which are important “in a field where six months is a game changer,” Farmer added.
There are also strong arguments in the other direction. Guardrails are needed “to ensure basic norms of truthfulness are maintained, the climate crisis is not supercharged [and] people’s work is not appropriated by Big Tech,” the consumer advocacy organization Public Citizen said in a July response to the White House AI Action Plan.
State-level guardrails may play a deciding role as the future of AI unfolds. The White House AI Action Plan, in part, is an effort to pre-empt state-level regulation efforts, noted Farmer, who said those state regulations could end up being an important backstop, giving businesses a level of much-needed clarity and perhaps reducing potential liability.
“The optimal path likely blends baseline federal and state standards with industry-led best practices, giving businesses certainty without stifling innovation,” Farmer concluded.
Adam Stone is a journalist with more than 20 years of experience covering technology trends in the public and private sectors.
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