Trump Says US Must Stay Ahead of China in AI, Downplays Calls to Slow Development

During a visit to Doonbeg, Ireland, on September 13, 2026, U.S. President Donald Trump responded to a reporter's question about whether the United States should slow down AI development or introduce more regulation, amid calls from the AI industry to pause rapid progress.

Instead of addressing safety risks first, Trump said the U.S. is ahead of China in AI and that he wants to maintain that lead, adding that "whoever wins AI wins everything." He acknowledged that some "guardrails" could be set for AI, but downplayed warnings about the risks of rapid AI development, saying that some "very negative forces" are pushing narratives about things that "are not going to happen."

The exchange came as several U.S. tech executives have warned that Chinese AI models are quickly catching up with American ones. In June 2026, White House AI and crypto czar David Sacks estimated that China's leading models lag those of the U.S. by only three to six months. Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang has similarly said China is only "a nanosecond" behind the U.S. in AI.

This was not the first time Trump has cited competition with China to play down the urgency of AI regulation. In late July 2026, he said the U.S. must balance regulation with maintaining leadership and avoid restricting domestic companies. On September 12, Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei called for slowing the pace of AI capability improvement, a plea later supported by OpenAI CEO Sam Altman and Elon Musk.

The Trump administration has generally favored fewer AI restrictions. Shortly after taking office in 2025, Trump revoked a 2023 AI executive order from the Biden administration. In June 2026, however, he signed an executive order establishing a voluntary review framework for cybersecurity capabilities of frontier AI models.