Skip to content
Search

Latest Stories

Top Stories

Warning: Trump’s Tariffs Pose Obstacles for AI Development

Warning: Trump’s Tariffs Pose Obstacles for AI Development

Humans are using laptops and computers to interact with AI, helping them create, code, train AI, or analyze big data with fast, cutting-edge technology.

Getty Images/Wanan Yossingkum

Huiyan Li

WASHINGTON – During a House Energy and Commerce Committee hearing on April 9, Democratic representatives repeatedly raised concerns that President Trump’s new tariffs and attempts to repeal the Inflation Reduction Act would harm U.S. competitiveness in artificial intelligence (AI).


“Republicans constantly talk about winning the AI race, but the actions they’re taking may appear as if they're purposely trying to lose that race,” said Rep. Frank Pallone Jr. (D-N.J.).

The U.S. remains at the forefront of foundational AI research, largely driven by its innovative tech industry and ability to draw top talent from around the world. However, experts cautioned that this lead is fragile and the gap is closing.

The January release of the Chinese AI startup DeepSeek’s R1 Model challenged the U.S.'s long-standing dominance in AI development, as the model rivals the most recent American reasoning models at only a fraction of the cost.

Eric Schmidt, former Google CEO and chair of the Special Competitive Studies Project, stated that outcompeting China is not only an economic goal, but also a strategic imperative for America to “preserve American economic dynamism, military superiority, and global influence.”

Pallone, the ranking member of the committee, stated that Trump’s tariffs would increase the cost of materials the U.S. needs for the AI competition, such as steel and aluminum.

Sign up for The Fulcrum newsletter

Starting last month, the Trump administration imposed a 25% tariff on imports of steel and aluminum products from all countries, restoring Section 232 of the US Trade Expansion Act of 1962.

Higher material costs could drive up expenses for building data centers and the transmission infrastructure that supplies electricity to them. The experts said these facilities are essential, and more should be built to advance AI.

Tariffs are already affecting AI-related industries. U.S. memory chipmaker Micron Technology announced on Tuesday that it would raise prices on some products starting Thursday due to President Trump’s new tariffs.

Manish Bhatia, executive vice president of global operations at Micron, was also on the witness panel. When Rep. Diana DeGette (D-Colo.) asked him about the price increases, he responded vaguely, saying, “Tariffs are an evolving situation.”

David Turk, a former deputy secretary of the Department of Energy under the Biden administration, stated that the tariffs imposed by President Trump introduced an immense amount of uncertainty that could deter near-term investment in powering AI.

“Folks who are planning data centers want certainty. They want stability of policy so they can plan on the floor. Tariffs are absolutely the worst if you want to bring on additional data and additional energy for data centers,” said Turk.


Turk added that Trump’s pledge to repeal the Inflation Reduction Act, which provides tax incentives, grants, and loans for clean energy, could discourage energy investment and drive costs even higher.

“We also need to be honest with ourselves right now. The quickest power, the most affordable power to bring onto our grids, including for data centers, is renewables and storage,” said Turk.

In 2025, the U.S. Energy Information Administration projected that 93% of new electricity capacity additions would come from renewable sources (solar and wind) and energy storage.

As the U.S. prioritizes meeting the surging energy demand driven by AI, Turk said it was the wrong time to make it more expensive to bring new electricity online, urging Congress to retain these important tax grants and loan tools.

Some Republicans disagreed.

“We are not going to do it with renewables because we just don’t have the time to build all you have to build out, including the transmission lines,” Rep. Gary Palmer (R-Ala.) said.

Palmer noted that a significant number of power generation facilities in the U.S. were shuttered and dismantled; however, the transmission lines from those facilities still remain. He suggested that the quickest way to meet energy demand would be to deploy small modular reactors that can be plugged into the existing transmission infrastructure.

Schmidt, former CEO of Google, agreed that small modular reactors could be a good solution. However, he stressed that none exist yet in America, and under the current regulatory structure, it could take 12 years to get one approved.

“We need a new program around much faster permitting for safer and safer fission and fusion nuclear SMRs as the correct path,” said Schmidt.

Huiyan Li is a reporter for Medill News Service covering business & technology. She is a journalism graduate student at Northwestern University specializing in politics, policy, and foreign affairs.

Read More

Should States Regulate AI?

Rep. Jay Obernolte, R-CA, speaks at an AI conference on Capitol Hill with experts

Provided

Should States Regulate AI?

WASHINGTON —- As House Republicans voted Thursday to pass a 10-year moratorium on AI regulation by states, Rep. Jay Obernolte, R-CA, and AI experts said the measure would be necessary to ensure US dominance in the industry.

“We want to make sure that AI continues to be led by the United States of America, and we want to make sure that our economy and our society realizes the potential benefits of AI deployment,” Obernolte said.

Keep ReadingShow less
The AI Race We Need: For a Better Future, Not Against Another Nation

The concept of AI hovering among the public.

Getty Images, J Studios

The AI Race We Need: For a Better Future, Not Against Another Nation

The AI race that warrants the lion’s share of our attention and resources is not the one with China. Both superpowers should stop hurriedly pursuing AI advances for the sake of “beating” the other. We’ve seen such a race before. Both participants lose. The real race is against an unacceptable status quo: declining lifespans, increasing income inequality, intensifying climate chaos, and destabilizing politics. That status quo will drag on, absent the sorts of drastic improvements AI can bring about. AI may not solve those problems but it may accelerate our ability to improve collective well-being. That’s a race worth winning.

Geopolitical races have long sapped the U.S. of realizing a better future sooner. The U.S. squandered scarce resources and diverted talented staff to close the alleged missile gap with the USSR. President Dwight D. Eisenhower rightfully noted, “Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired signifies, in the final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed.” He realized that every race comes at an immense cost. In this case, the country was “spending the sweat of its laborers, the genius of its scientists, the hopes of its children.”

Keep ReadingShow less
Closeup of Software engineering team engaged in problem-solving and code analysis

Closeup of Software engineering team engaged in problem-solving and code analysis.

Getty Images, MTStock Studio

AI Is Here. Our Laws Are Stuck in the Past.

Artificial intelligence (AI) promises a future once confined to science fiction: personalized medicine accounting for your specific condition, accelerated scientific discovery addressing the most difficult challenges, and reimagined public education designed around AI tutors suited to each student's learning style. We see glimpses of this potential on a daily basis. Yet, as AI capabilities surge forward at exponential speed, the laws and regulations meant to guide them remain anchored in the twentieth century (if not the nineteenth or eighteenth!). This isn't just inefficient; it's dangerously reckless.

For too long, our approach to governing new technologies, including AI, has been one of cautious incrementalism—trying to fit revolutionary tools into outdated frameworks. We debate how century-old privacy torts apply to vast AI training datasets, how liability rules designed for factory machines might cover autonomous systems, or how copyright law conceived for human authors handles AI-generated creations. We tinker around the edges, applying digital patches to analog laws.

Keep ReadingShow less
Nurturing the Next Generation of Journalists
man using MacBook Air

Nurturing the Next Generation of Journalists

“Student journalists are uniquely positioned to take on the challenges of complicating the narrative about how we see each other, putting forward new solutions to how we can work together and have dialogue across difference,” said Maxine Rich, the Program Manager with Common Ground USA. I had the chance to interview her earlier this year about Common Ground Journalism, a new initiative to support students reporting in contentious times.

A partnership with The Fulcrum and the Latino News Network (LNN), I joined Maxine and Nicole Donelan, Program Assistant with Common Ground USA, as co-instructor of the first Common Ground Journalism cohort, which ran for six weeks between January and March 2025.

Keep ReadingShow less