Commerce Hoping to Move Fast on AI Exports Program, Official Says
The Commerce Department is working with “all possible speed” to set up its AI exports program and is still accepting feedback on how best to shape it, said Brandon Remington, deputy undersecretary for policy at the International Trade Administration.
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Remington, speaking during an event this week hosted by the Washington International Trade Association, noted that Commerce is still reviewing the public comments it received on its request for information earlier this year about the new program (see 2512010010 and 2510220008) and is still soliciting feedback from industry.
“Hopefully we will get lots more feedback,” Remington said. He said Commerce not only wants input from American exporters that are already selling their AI technologies around the world, but also the “foreign allies and partners” that are buying American products.
“What is helpful to you?” he asked of those buyers. He added that there are “two sides to these transactions,” and “we want to deeply understand those. We want to understand the pain points, and we want to design precise value around those pain points.”
Asked whether the Trump administration plans to use the program to counter trade “problems” it has with other countries, Remington said “everything's on the table right now.” He said foreign nations that have similar digital trade regulations, data laws and other rules similar to those of the U.S. “would be very compatible with us, and that seems to be a prerequisite.”
“And the more that those things get in the way, the harder it's going to be to harmonize our policies with theirs. That includes export controls as well,” Remington said. “So we're looking to build the circle of friends that we can share these benefits with, that we can enable American companies to sell into, and so then that way, they can take part in the big transformations that are happening and that are coming from AI and the benefits that those bring.”
Remington declined to say whether Commerce has a timeline for establishing the program. “There'll be a process there. You'll hear more soon,” he said. “But I would say” the administration is moving with “all possible speed.”
Other panelists during the WITA event were also asked about the AI exports program and the administration's broader AI action plan released in July, which said the U.S. should export American AI systems around the world while also imposing stringent controls on advanced AI chips and considering new restrictions on the subsystems of semiconductor manufacturing equipment (see 2507230028).
Emily Benson, head of strategy at intelligence and advisory firm Minerva, said there are still some "unresolved questions" around how the administration is balancing its desire for more exports and strong export controls. She noted that Commerce earlier this year announced plans to nix the Biden-era AI diffusion rule, but there has been no clear policy to take its place (see 2505070039, 2505130018 and 2507270003).
"We haven't gotten a lot of clarity about the ultimate intention of dealing with the export control question on the [AI] stack," she said. "That will be complicated -- very complicated -- for a lot of different reasons. But it would serve, I think, all of us collectively quite well to have additional clarity on which markets are fair game and which are not. That's a very undecided question."
Geoffrey Gertz, a senior fellow with the Center for a New American Security, said he believes there still needs to be "much more clarity on" the administration's China strategy. He said it's apparent that the administration is being "very cautious about taking any new competitive actions in the national security space against China" out of concern that those actions might disrupt the two sides' trade truce, and there is "some logic to that." But Gertz suggested that isn't a substitute for a strategy.
"We're a little bit unclear now where we are going," he said. "I think the administration, at times, has been much more aggressive towards China, and at times, much more accommodationist, and we [need] a real kind of clarity on what the vision is there."