Last week, the White House released its “2025 AI Action Plan”: a 28-page executive-led strategy to secure America’s global leadership in artificial intelligence. AEI AI expert John Bailey evaluates the potential and gaps in the president’s approach.

Alongside artificial intelligence, semiconductor manufacturing remains the other vital technological front in the United States’ competition with China. In a new AEI report, Chip War author Chris Miller explains the international semiconductor trade and its implications for US tariff policy.

One of Trump’s most important first-term accomplishments was creating a bipartisan consensus to respond to China’s growing threat. However, Hal Brands warns that Trump’s tariff agenda, and many other second-term actions, are undermining US capability and leverage—and in turn increasing the risks of the very hot war his first term sought to deter.

Much of the United States’ economic vitality depends on its statistical system: the federal government’s data collecting and reporting that every business sector uses. In a new open letter, AEI economists including Michael R. Strain, R. Glenn Hubbard, Stan Veuger, and Bruce D. Meyer highlight the urgent need for investment and innovation in these agencies to preserve their quality and integrity.

Unconditional cash assistance for parents has become increasingly popular on the left and the populist right after the temporary child tax credit expansion in 2021 and the nearly passed proposed extension in 2024. AEI Center on Opportunity and Social Mobility Deputy Director Kevin Corinth calls attention to a new four-year study that shows there is no evidence that this kind of assistance helps children.