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    "url": "https://americancompass.org/understanding-america/",
    "title": "Understanding America",
    "text": "The Americans who become policymakers and pundits are, generally speaking, drawn from a remarkably narrow sliver of the national population. They tend to be academically gifted and career-oriented. Their lives tend to follow a particular script that takes them far from home, to selective colleges and then white-collar jobs in a small set of coastal cities. They get married to each other and have children on a schedule conducive to their professional goals.\n\nNone of these characteristics are necessarily bad ones—to the contrary, in many cases they are quite admirable, and ones useful to effective policymaking. The problem emerges when the people exercising political power all have thesamecharacteristics and, in contact only with each other, come to assume that the people they serve must all be like that, too.\n\nAt American Compass, we work to understand the wide range of values that shape American lives and the ways those conflict with the assumptions that guide national policy debates. We develop tools to help policymakers better understand their constituents and the areas in which their policy agendas are falling short.\n\nFor instance, rather than generating the usual partisan fodder, our public opinion surveys explore Americans’ life circumstances and priorities. OurHome Building Surveyexamines the family structure and caregiving arrangements that Americans of different education and income levels prefer, while ourNot What They Bargained For Surveyexamines the employment conditions of American workers and the labor-management relationships they desired. A two-part survey,Failure to LaunchandFailing on Purposestudies the paths that young Americans take through the education system and the purposes they and their parents most want that system to fulfill.\n\nWe also publish a range of qualitative and quantitative analysis on the state of American politics and society. OurParty Foulcollection features leading scholars from both the left and right critiquing the “deadly sins” of their own parties, while our Compass Point essay series includes discussion of issues likeoverreliance on experts. Each of the entries in our Atlas series provides a data-based view of some element of the American landscape, fromeconomic growthtoinequalitytohigher education.\n\nWe are especially proud to have publishedThe Edgerton Essays, a collection of two dozen essays by working-class Americans answering in their own words the question, “What do you wish policymakers knew about the challenges facing their families and communities?” As the collection’s editor, Patrick T. Brown, wrote in itsconclusion, “Political leaders, researchers, and commentators will all need to work harder if they want to understand the daily concerns of politically disconnected voters in the middle of the income distribution and develop an agenda that speaks to them.”",
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    "url": "https://americancompass.org/supportive-communities/",
    "title": "Supportive Communities",
    "text": "American markets will only work well and deliver widespread prosperity if they have the support of strong community institutions. Market fundamentalism often tries to reduce the complexities of a modern market to just two individuals trading on a desert island, and to define capitalism as nothing more than “economic freedom.” But conservatives recognize that a range of institutions operating prior to the market, alongside it, and within it act to shape the market’s outcomes, and market outcomes in turn exert a powerful influence on the institutions.\n\nAt American Compass, we work to understand the role that strong institutions play in market outcomes and develop public policies that would better support those institutions experiencing significant erosion.\n\nThe first and most important of these institutions is thefamily, which plays the indispensable role in preparing the next generation to assume the responsibilities of citizenship. Families must form if that next generation is to exist at all, and they must provide stable, nurturing environments if children are to emerge into adulthood prepared to support themselves, make productive contributions to their communities, and form families of their own. Strong families provide the foundation for a market economy, yet the market places no value on them, and market forces tend to prove highly corrosive.\n\nOurHome Buildingcollection provides a comprehensive overview of issues for policymakers to consider in going beyond just talking about families to supporting them. The survey of thousands of parenting-age Americans paints a stark picture of thechallenges facing familiesand shows howthe help they needdiffers from the package of progressive proposals typically in focus. We have also led conservative efforts to developa monthly per-child benefit for working familiesand conductedin-depth pollingon the form that Americans want such a benefit to take.\n\nPubliceducationplays a complementary role to the family’s in equipping young people for success in life and in the market. Schools perform several functions—teaching practical skills, instilling shared values, cultivating virtuous leaders, and fueling innovation—that are vital to the market’s success. OurFailing on Purposecollection explores these functions and presents survey data on what Americans want from the education system, while ourRetooling American Educationcollection provides a range of policy proposals for developing non-college pathways.\n\nOther institutions are themselves participants in the market, or play a supporting role in transactions made by others. Thelaborunion is the most prominent of these, providing workers with power in the labor market and representation in the workplace, as well as supports like training and benefits. America’s labor movement, especially in the private sector, has faded toward irrelevance and become focused primarily on political activism. But in ourSeat at the Tablecollection we make the case that “strong worker representation can make America stronger.” OurBetter Bargaincollection provides abroad surveyof worker attitudes toward organized labor and a series of proposals for reform.",
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    "url": "https://americancompass.org/charting-the-course/",
    "title": "Charting the Course",
    "text": "“Capitalism is just another word for economic freedom.”\n\n“As we are dealing with changes in our economy, tax cuts are always a good idea.”\n\n“Markets do not fail us. We fail markets.”\n\nFor the past generation, American conservatives have outsourced their economic thinking to libertarians, whose market fundamentalism collapses into dogmas like these and a policy agenda limited to tax cuts, deregulation, and free trade.\n\nConservatives rightly value free markets, but we also recognize that markets require rules and institutions to work well, that they are a means to the end of human flourishing and exist to serve us (not the other way around), and that larger televisions and fancier cars are not what people value most. Rather than evaluate the economy by how much stuff it allows everyone to consume, conservative economics asks whether the economy empowers workers to support their families and communities, whether it strengthens the social fabric, and whether it fosters domestic industry and innovation. Public policy plays a vital role in advancing those goals.\n\nRead More About Conservative Economics\n\nChanneling the pursuit of profit toward the nation's liberty and prosperity\n\nCapitalism only works when the rules of the game align pursuit of profit with investment in domestic production and employment. If capital earns greater returns from speculating, offshoring, and monopolizing than from building, hiring, and innovating, public policy must respond.Read More\n\nStrengthening the institutions that allow markets to deliver on their promise\n\nIndividuals only flourish when shaped and supported by their families, neighborhoods, schools, workplaces, labor unions, churches, and more. Public policies and economic forces play powerful roles in reinforcing or eroding the foundations of these institutions, which are essential to our liberty and prosperity.Read More\n\nDefining success as achievement of the outcomes that people value most\n\nEconomists have misread economic conditions, prompting a justified populist backlash. Most Americans prioritize dignified work, self-sufficiency, and solidarity over unconstrained consumption. Policymakers must understand and respect the nation’s frustrations and aspirations if they are to serve it effectively.Read More\n\n©2026 American Compass, Inc. |Privacy Policy\n\nJoin our mailing list to receive our latest research, news, and commentary.\n\nSubscribe to receive updates, previews, and more.",
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    "url": "https://americancompass.org/globalization/",
    "title": "Globalization",
    "text": "Globalization has produced aradically different resultfrom the widely shared prosperity that its advocates promised. Instead, production shifted from some countries to others, taking labor demand with it and leaving behind a weakened industrial base, collapsed communities, and poor employment prospects. These shifts result not from genuine comparative advantage, but rather in response to aggressive government subsidies and the availability of exploitable labor in countries like China. Uncontrolled immigration and temporary work programs havea similar effect in reverse, flooding some countries with additional labor that releases the pressure on employers to pay good wages or invest in higher productivity.\n\nThis form of“free trade” is not the epitome of free-market capitalism; it is the antithesis. Economists and policymakers who believed that capitalism is “just another word for economic freedom” assumed that the free flow of goods, people, and capital across borders would automatically generate prosperity. But capitalism relies upon the mutual dependence of a nation’s capital and labor to produce good outcomes for both, and for consumers, too. Globalization has severed those bonds, urging the owners of mobile capital to forsake the interests of their fellow citizens and pursue higher profits through labor arbitrage abroad. American workers, their families, and their communities paid the price. The nation’s industrial strength, capacity for innovation, and economic resilience declined.\n\nChina poses a particular problem. Globalization’s rise coincided with the Cold War’s end, in part, because a global free trade system that incorporated the Soviet bloc was unthinkable. But the “holiday from history” of the 1990s created a presumption that liberal market democracy was on the march everywhere, and globalization’s proponents argued that incorporating China into a global marketplace would accelerate its own liberalization.They were wrong. Instead, China changed us—corrupting the free market, distorting investment flows, capturing valuable industries, and even exporting its authoritarian politics through campaigns of economic pressure.\n\nAt American Compass, we work to understand why globalization has failed and what alternatives exist. We develop approaches through which policymakers can rebalance America’s role in the global economy.\n\nTheRegaining Our Balancecollection presents a comprehensive critique of how globalization has gone wrong, including Oren Cass’s seminal essay,Searching for Capitalism in the Wreckage of Globalization, and Senator Jeff Sessions’s reflection onhow conservatives, himself included, were led astray. InWrong All Along, page after page of quotations from an overconfident elite exposes the flawed ideology that has driven globalization; inWhere’s the Growth, chart after chart depicts the negative economic results. Other essays dig deeper on particular facets of the failure, including Senator Marco Rubio’s assessment ofChina’s ascension to the WTOand Michael Pettis’s economic analysis ofhow free trade theory has broken downin practice. TheGuide to the Semiconductor Industryprovides a concrete example of these forces eroding American leadership and prosperity.\n\nWhile evidence for globalization’s success is scarce, the market fundamentalism prevalent on the right-of-center has traditionally ignored this reality, instead pushing a narrative in which America has always embraced an open economy and any alternative would be worse. TheRebooting the American Systemcollection confronts these myths. In fact, the American economic tradition historically resisted global entanglement and the economy developed into an industrial colossus with the help of aggressive public investment and high trade barriers. Oddly enough, as John Burtka observes inDon’t Trade on Me, free trade dogma was imported to America by the antebellum, secessionist South. TheReagan-era quotaon Japanese vehicle imports, which strengthened domestic manufacturers and gave birth to a massive new industry in the American South, provides compelling proof that a different approach can work.\n\nExamples like these point toward possible solutions today.The Balancing Actprovides a comprehensive overview of interventions that could help bring American trade, immigration, and investment flows back into balance. TheMoving the Chainscollection details a range of strategies for reshoring American industry and innovation, including Willy Shih’s proposal forpre-competitive consortiaand Michael Lind’s proposal forlocal content requirements. Fortunately, the unthinking consensus that encouraged mockery of anyone who questioned globalization’s wisdom has collapsed, and policymakers are beginning to act.",
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    "category": "Globalization",
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    "url": "https://americancompass.org/about/#events",
    "title": "To restore an economic consensus that emphasizes the importance of family, community, and industry to the nation’s liberty and prosperity.",
    "text": "from growth for its own sake to widely shared economic development that sustains vital social institutions.\n\nfor a nation where families can support themselves, contribute to their communities, and prepare the next generation for the same.\n\nthe limitations that markets and government each face in promoting the general welfare and the nation’s security.\n\nChanneling the pursuit of profit toward the nation’s liberty and prosperity\n\nStrengthening the institutions that allow markets to deliver on their promise\n\nDefining success as achievement of the outcomes that people value most\n\nAmerican Compass is led by a team with years of experience in some of America’s preeminent conservative institutions and across the fields of business, law, and public policy.\n\nApplications are now open for our 2026 Summer Fellowship. Learn more and applyhere.\n\nWe do not have any open positions at this time but are always interested in hearing from people who might be a good fit to work with us. If that’s you, feel free to send a note to hiring@americancompass.org.\n\nCompass Advisors are leading policy experts in their respective fields who contribute to and advise on our research, commentary, and policy proposals.\n\nEthics and Public Policy Center\n\nNew York University School of Law\n\nFoundation for American Innovation\n\nFormer U.S. Trade Representative\n\nEthics and Public Policy Center\n\nEthics and Public Policy Center\n\nCenter on Child and Family Policy\n\ncontact form for compass advisor\n\nWe welcome all inquiries and suggestions. A member of our team will try to respond to you as soon as possible.\n\nEmail us atmedia@americancompass.org\n\nAt the New World Gala on June 3, 2025, Secretary of State Marco Rubio spoke about how misguided globalization left America weakened, and how to set our country back on the right course.\n\nAt the New World Gala on June 3, 2025, Vice President JD Vance joined American Compass founder and chief economist Oren Cass for a wide-ranging discussion of the ongoing politicalRead more…\n\n©2026 American Compass, Inc. |Privacy Policy\n\nJoin our mailing list to receive our latest research, news, and commentary.\n\nSubscribe to receive updates, previews, and more.",
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    "url": "https://americancompass.org/privacy-policy/",
    "title": "Privacy Policy",
    "text": "This Privacy Policy describes how your personal information is collected, used, and shared when you visit or make a donation athttps://americancompass.org(the “Site”).\n\nWhen you visit the Site, we automatically collect certain information about your device, including information about your web browser, IP address, time zone, and some of the cookies that are installed on your device. Additionally, as you browse the Site, we collect information about the individual web pages or products that you view, what websites or search terms referred you to the Site, and information about how you interact with the Site. We refer to this automatically-collected information as “Device Information.”\n\nWe collect Device Information using the following technologies:\n\nAdditionally when you make a donation or attempt to make a donation through the Site, we may collect certain information from you, including your name, billing address, payment information (including credit card numbers, and email address. We refer to this information as “Order Information.”\n\nWhen we talk about “Personal Information” in this Privacy Policy, we are talking both about Device Information and Order Information.\n\nWe use the Order Information that we collect generally to process any donations placed through the Site (including processing your payment information and providing you with a confirmation or receipt). Additionally, we use this Order Information to:\n\nWe use the Device Information that we collect to help us screen for potential risk and fraud (in particular, your IP address), and more generally to improve and optimize our Site (for example, by generating analytics about how our supporters browse and interact with the Site, and to assess the success of our marketing and advertising campaigns).\n\nWe share your Personal Information with third parties to help us use your Personal Information, as described above. For example, we use Stripe to process donations. We also use Google Analytics to help us understand how our visitors use the Site–you can read more about how Google uses your Personal Information here:https://www.google.com/intl/en/policies/privacy/. You can also opt-out of Google Analytics here:https://tools.google.com/dlpage/gaoptout.\n\nFinally, we may also share your Personal Information to comply with applicable laws and regulations, to respond to a subpoena, search warrant or other lawful request for information we receive, or to otherwise protect our rights.\n\nAs described above, we use your Personal Information to provide you with targeted advertisements or marketing communications we believe may be of interest to you. For more information about how targeted advertising works, you can visit the Network Advertising Initiative’s (“NAI”) educational page athttp://www.networkadvertising.org/understanding-online-advertising/how-does-it-work.\n\nYou can opt out of targeted advertising by visiting:\n\nAdditionally, you can opt out of some of these services by visiting the Digital Advertising Alliance’s opt-out portal at:http://optout.aboutads.info/.\n\nPlease note that we do not alter our Site’s data collection and use practices when we see a Do Not Track signal from your browser.\n\nIf you are a European resident, you have the right to access personal information we hold about you and to ask that your personal information be corrected, updated, or deleted. If you would like to exercise this right, please contact us through the contact information below.\n\nAdditionally, please note that your information will be transferred outside of Europe, including to Canada and the United States.\n\nWhen you place an order through the Site, we will maintain your Order Information for our records unless and until you ask us to delete this information.\n\nWe may update this privacy policy from time to time in order to reflect, for example, changes to our practices or for other operational, legal or regulatory reasons.\n\nFor more information about our privacy practices, if you have questions, or if you would like to make a complaint, please contact us by e-mail atcontact@americancompass.orgor by mail using the details provided below:\n\n300 Independence Avenue SE, Washington, DC, 20003, United States",
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    "url": "https://americancompass.org/financialization/",
    "title": "Financialization",
    "text": "Robust financial markets are vital to a productive economy. But they are not an end unto themselves. Their task is to facilitate investment by connecting capital to its most valuable uses at the lowest possible cost.\n\nIn recent decades, American finance has metastasized, claiming a disproportionate share of the nation’s top business talent and the economy’s profits, even as actual investment has declined. Businesses, rather than invest their own profits in growth and innovation,increasingly disgorge capital back into the market, where it flows into speculative frenzies that drive the prices of existing assets higher rather than creating new ones. The private equity and hedge fund industries have captured hundreds of billions of dollars in fees whileunderperforming simple market indices. Strategies that load debt onto companiesplace workers and their communities at riskwhile transferring the profits far away. This “financialization” of the American economy weakens the nation and threatens our future prosperity.\n\nThe policy problem is one of omission: Economists and regulators expect investors pursuing profit to allocate capital “efficiently,” which they assume also means “productively.” Butas Adam Smith knew well, the pursuit of private interest will only advance the public interest under certain conditions. Clearly, those conditions do not hold today.\n\nAt American Compass, we work to understand how and why financial markets have malfunctioned. We develop constraints that policymakers can impose on market actors to focus talent and capital in productive directions.\n\nTheWe’re Just Speculating Herecollection presents in stark detail the transformation of American corporations from productive investors to cash-dispensing machines. A research brief onThe Corporate Erosion of Capitalismanalyzes nearly 50 years of public company data, and the accompanying essay,The Rise of Wall Street and the Fall of American Investment, explains the implications for policymakers. More broadly, theCorporate Actual Responsibilitycollection examines the obligations that businesses have to their communities but have abandoned under the theory of shareholder primacy.\n\nHigh finance—the domain of private equity titans, hedge fund whiz kids, and venture capitalists—plays a prominent role in the American economy and offers a valuable case study in the disconnect between free-market rhetoric and real-market results. TheCoin-Flip Capitalismcollection scrutinizes the claimed value proposition of these funds and contrasts it with their poor performance over time. Start with theCoin-FlipCapitalismPrimer, and then see the dysfunction in practice withThe Guide to Private Equity.\n\nFortunately, policymakers have many tools at their disposal. The policy paper onConfronting Coin-Flip Capitalismprovides the rationale for action and a menu of options, whileNo Need to Speculatemakes the in-depth, empirical case for a financial transaction tax. Without substituting the regulator’s judgment for the investor’s, well-designed market rules for addressing issues like bankruptcy, taxation, and disclosure can make the productive use of capital relatively more profitable, making it more attractive to investors and more likely to occur.",
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    "url": "https://americancompass.org/about/#annual-report",
    "title": "To restore an economic consensus that emphasizes the importance of family, community, and industry to the nation’s liberty and prosperity.",
    "text": "from growth for its own sake to widely shared economic development that sustains vital social institutions.\n\nfor a nation where families can support themselves, contribute to their communities, and prepare the next generation for the same.\n\nthe limitations that markets and government each face in promoting the general welfare and the nation’s security.\n\nChanneling the pursuit of profit toward the nation’s liberty and prosperity\n\nStrengthening the institutions that allow markets to deliver on their promise\n\nDefining success as achievement of the outcomes that people value most\n\nAmerican Compass is led by a team with years of experience in some of America’s preeminent conservative institutions and across the fields of business, law, and public policy.\n\nApplications are now open for our 2026 Summer Fellowship. Learn more and applyhere.\n\nWe do not have any open positions at this time but are always interested in hearing from people who might be a good fit to work with us. If that’s you, feel free to send a note to hiring@americancompass.org.\n\nCompass Advisors are leading policy experts in their respective fields who contribute to and advise on our research, commentary, and policy proposals.\n\nEthics and Public Policy Center\n\nNew York University School of Law\n\nFoundation for American Innovation\n\nFormer U.S. Trade Representative\n\nEthics and Public Policy Center\n\nEthics and Public Policy Center\n\nCenter on Child and Family Policy\n\ncontact form for compass advisor\n\nWe welcome all inquiries and suggestions. A member of our team will try to respond to you as soon as possible.\n\nEmail us atmedia@americancompass.org\n\nAt the New World Gala on June 3, 2025, Secretary of State Marco Rubio spoke about how misguided globalization left America weakened, and how to set our country back on the right course.\n\nAt the New World Gala on June 3, 2025, Vice President JD Vance joined American Compass founder and chief economist Oren Cass for a wide-ranging discussion of the ongoing politicalRead more…\n\n©2026 American Compass, Inc. |Privacy Policy\n\nJoin our mailing list to receive our latest research, news, and commentary.\n\nSubscribe to receive updates, previews, and more.",
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    "url": "https://americancompass.org/browse-our-library/?_sft_category=commentary",
    "title": "Browse our library",
    "text": "In November, Harvard Business School hosted a debate between Oren Cass and Katherine Tai on one side, and Larry Summers and Robert Lawrence on the other, over the question: ShouldRead more…\n\nIt’s bonus season on Wall Street, and a record-setting 2025 is yielding bigger paychecks than ever for America’s investment bankers, thanks to their hard work doing, well, what exactly?\n\nMatthew Rose, an Opinion editorial director, hosted an online conversation with three contributing Opinion writers (Oren Cass, Natasha Sarin, and Jason Forman) about the Federal Reserve. Matthew Rose: After months ofRead more…\n\n“It is not good for man to be alone.” These words from Genesis 2 have acquired a new urgency and relevance in recent years, as the Western world grapples withRead more…\n\nHow to Build an Economic and Security Order That Works for America\n\nThe Faster Labor Contracts Acts presents a new opportunity for labor-curious Republicans.\n\nIt’s the next stage, however, that will define Mr. Trump’s legacy: Can he and his administration move past the demolition, clear the debris and, well, build back better?\n\nA short-term profit grab risks eroding America’s biggest advantage in the AI race.\n\nOf all the technical flaws in the badly broken international trade system, the one most intuitive to the layman is the race to the bottom on labor. In the globalRead more…\n\nThe Trump administration’s AI Action Plan will need more depth if it is going to work.\n\nNearly four months after President Trump’s “Liberation Day” announcement of higher reciprocal tariff rates on major U.S. trading partners, the dust has settled and the strategy is working. Over the last fewRead more…\n\nEarlier this month, Microsoft announced plans to lay off 9,000 employees, joining the ranks of tech companies cutting headcounts while touting the productivity gains enabled by artificial intelligence. According to CEORead more…\n\nLong-term frameworks are necessary to lock in the desired effects of the US administration’s most controversial policies.\n\nThere is a position between the old Republican guard and budget fairyland.\n\nInnovation has stalled in a globalised era dominated by state-sponsored national champions.\n\nThe perceived stability of Catholicism is attractive in an exhausting world of upheaval.\n\nIn a multi-polar world, old certainties about the US security guarantee and access to markets no longer hold.\n\nThe reciprocal levies aimed at allies have been paused for 90 days, now what?\n\nLast week’s “Liberation Day” marked a kind of D-Day in the effort to reorder the international economic system.\n\nPresident Trump ushered in a new era of US trade policy Tuesday — a national course correction after decades of unfair trade practices\n\n©2026 American Compass, Inc. |Privacy Policy\n\nJoin our mailing list to receive our latest research, news, and commentary.\n\nSubscribe to receive updates, previews, and more.",
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    "url": "https://americancompass.org/about/#contact",
    "title": "To restore an economic consensus that emphasizes the importance of family, community, and industry to the nation’s liberty and prosperity.",
    "text": "from growth for its own sake to widely shared economic development that sustains vital social institutions.\n\nfor a nation where families can support themselves, contribute to their communities, and prepare the next generation for the same.\n\nthe limitations that markets and government each face in promoting the general welfare and the nation’s security.\n\nChanneling the pursuit of profit toward the nation’s liberty and prosperity\n\nStrengthening the institutions that allow markets to deliver on their promise\n\nDefining success as achievement of the outcomes that people value most\n\nAmerican Compass is led by a team with years of experience in some of America’s preeminent conservative institutions and across the fields of business, law, and public policy.\n\nApplications are now open for our 2026 Summer Fellowship. Learn more and applyhere.\n\nWe do not have any open positions at this time but are always interested in hearing from people who might be a good fit to work with us. If that’s you, feel free to send a note to hiring@americancompass.org.\n\nCompass Advisors are leading policy experts in their respective fields who contribute to and advise on our research, commentary, and policy proposals.\n\nEthics and Public Policy Center\n\nNew York University School of Law\n\nFoundation for American Innovation\n\nFormer U.S. Trade Representative\n\nEthics and Public Policy Center\n\nEthics and Public Policy Center\n\nCenter on Child and Family Policy\n\ncontact form for compass advisor\n\nWe welcome all inquiries and suggestions. A member of our team will try to respond to you as soon as possible.\n\nEmail us atmedia@americancompass.org\n\nAt the New World Gala on June 3, 2025, Secretary of State Marco Rubio spoke about how misguided globalization left America weakened, and how to set our country back on the right course.\n\nAt the New World Gala on June 3, 2025, Vice President JD Vance joined American Compass founder and chief economist Oren Cass for a wide-ranging discussion of the ongoing politicalRead more…\n\n©2026 American Compass, Inc. |Privacy Policy\n\nJoin our mailing list to receive our latest research, news, and commentary.\n\nSubscribe to receive updates, previews, and more.",
    "author": "Unknown",
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    "url": "http://americancompass.org/browse-our-library/?_sft_category=research",
    "title": "Browse our library",
    "text": "Should individual savers have access to alternative assets like private equity funds and cryptocurrency in tax-advantaged retirement accounts?\n\nShould individual savers have access to alternative assets like private equity funds and cryptocurrency in tax-advantaged retirement accounts?\n\nShould individual savers have access to alternative assets like private equity funds and cryptocurrency in tax-advantaged retirement accounts?\n\nProtecting American AI Dominance from China’s Globalization Playbook\n\nHolding the purveyors of AI EdTech to high standards will spur innovation in the present and set today’s students up for success as tomorrow’s citizens, workers, thinkers, and entrepreneurs.\n\nSetting real standards for AI in schools.\n\nAmerican Compass Comment to the Department of Education\n\nIf unions wish to do politics, their duty of fair representation surely extends to that effort.\n\nPRO Act provisions supported by the working class have broad bipartisan appeal.\n\nShipbuilding is a major component of any nation’s economic security.\n\nThe case for eliminating the U.S. trade deficit, supporting high-quality jobs, and expanding domestic manufacturing through fair and reciprocal trade policies\n\nUsing the Defense Production Act to support U.S. critical mineral development\n\nAn executive blueprint to strengthen families, communities, and industry\n\nYoung non-white men are key swing voters in 2024, but Democrats don’t speak to them\n\nPoliticians are still selling a “Dream” that voters aren’t buying\n\nA review of the latest developments in the private equity, venture capital, and hedge fund sectors.\n\nA new report makes the case for revoking China’s “Permanent Normal Trade Relations” status and implementing a new set of tariff rates\n\nEven among Republicans, few can identify major areas where they’d like government to do less\n\nRepublicans, Independents, and the working and middle classes respond to the pressures facing working families\n\nThe president’s polarizing policies are ones that divide Democrats and the upper class from everyone else\n\n©2026 American Compass, Inc. |Privacy Policy\n\nJoin our mailing list to receive our latest research, news, and commentary.\n\nSubscribe to receive updates, previews, and more.",
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    "url": "https://americancompass.org/the-commons/",
    "title": "The Commons",
    "text": "Making Sense of Conservative Economics\n\nTrump’s anti-bureaucracy energy should be directed at regulation as well as waste\n\nIt isn’t just about criminal punishments and presidential pardons\n\nThe old GOP dictated Trump’s Tax Cuts and Jobs Act. His new coalition should shape its future.\n\nOren speaks on a panel about economic policy in Trump’s second term and more with Jason Furman, Richard Burkhauser, and Kimberly Clausing.\n\nIn November, Harvard Business School hosted a debate between Oren Cass and Katherine Tai on one side, and Larry Summers and Robert Lawrence on the other, over the question: ShouldRead more…\n\nIt’s bonus season on Wall Street, and a record-setting 2025 is yielding bigger paychecks than ever for America’s investment bankers, thanks to their hard work doing, well, what exactly?\n\nMatthew Rose, an Opinion editorial director, hosted an online conversation with three contributing Opinion writers (Oren Cass, Natasha Sarin, and Jason Forman) about the Federal Reserve. Matthew Rose: After months ofRead more…\n\n“It is not good for man to be alone.” These words from Genesis 2 have acquired a new urgency and relevance in recent years, as the Western world grapples withRead more…\n\nHow to Build an Economic and Security Order That Works for America\n\n©2026 American Compass, Inc. |Privacy Policy\n\nJoin our mailing list to receive our latest research, news, and commentary.\n\nSubscribe to receive updates, previews, and more.",
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    "url": "https://americancompass.org/about/#team-careers",
    "title": "To restore an economic consensus that emphasizes the importance of family, community, and industry to the nation’s liberty and prosperity.",
    "text": "from growth for its own sake to widely shared economic development that sustains vital social institutions.\n\nfor a nation where families can support themselves, contribute to their communities, and prepare the next generation for the same.\n\nthe limitations that markets and government each face in promoting the general welfare and the nation’s security.\n\nChanneling the pursuit of profit toward the nation’s liberty and prosperity\n\nStrengthening the institutions that allow markets to deliver on their promise\n\nDefining success as achievement of the outcomes that people value most\n\nAmerican Compass is led by a team with years of experience in some of America’s preeminent conservative institutions and across the fields of business, law, and public policy.\n\nApplications are now open for our 2026 Summer Fellowship. Learn more and applyhere.\n\nWe do not have any open positions at this time but are always interested in hearing from people who might be a good fit to work with us. If that’s you, feel free to send a note to hiring@americancompass.org.\n\nCompass Advisors are leading policy experts in their respective fields who contribute to and advise on our research, commentary, and policy proposals.\n\nEthics and Public Policy Center\n\nNew York University School of Law\n\nFoundation for American Innovation\n\nFormer U.S. Trade Representative\n\nEthics and Public Policy Center\n\nEthics and Public Policy Center\n\nCenter on Child and Family Policy\n\ncontact form for compass advisor\n\nWe welcome all inquiries and suggestions. A member of our team will try to respond to you as soon as possible.\n\nEmail us atmedia@americancompass.org\n\nAt the New World Gala on June 3, 2025, Secretary of State Marco Rubio spoke about how misguided globalization left America weakened, and how to set our country back on the right course.\n\nAt the New World Gala on June 3, 2025, Vice President JD Vance joined American Compass founder and chief economist Oren Cass for a wide-ranging discussion of the ongoing politicalRead more…\n\n©2026 American Compass, Inc. |Privacy Policy\n\nJoin our mailing list to receive our latest research, news, and commentary.\n\nSubscribe to receive updates, previews, and more.",
    "author": "Unknown",
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    "url": "https://americancompass.org/it-cant-just-be-doge/",
    "title": "It Can’t Just Be DOGE",
    "text": "President-elect Donald Trump’s return to Washington will surely bring with it a renewed focus on the administrative state and its excesses. Exemplifying that effort is themuch–media–malignedDepartment of Government Efficiency, or DOGE, headed by Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy. While the two currently seemsidetrackedby immigration debates online, we shouldn’t forget where their energies will (hopefully) soon be directed back to theirwildly popularnew gig overseeing DOGE.\n\nThere’s a reason the effort is so popular with ordinary Americans: wasteful government spending is undoubtedly a problem. Every year, the federal government, through its opaque and oftenprogressively infusedgrantmaking process, spends billions of dollars on the types of things few sane Americans would support. From federal pickleballfundingto nearly $10 billion per year spent on unused buildings, there are plenty of examples of ridiculous government outlays that benefit few, if any, Americans.\n\nThe latest is the news revealed last month that the Department of Education spent$1 billion(yes, with a B) on promoting Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) efforts, including “a $1.2 million grant for training 40 elementary school teachers how to ‘enact equity-centered education,’” whatever that means. Any move to rein in this insane leviathan of federal spending, under an administration that has pledged to change things up is one that should be supported.\n\nBut we shouldn’t confuse DOGE with a solution to wasteful government writ large. The Trump-Vance administration should approach the rest of the federal bureaucracy with the same gusto as it has teed up DOGE.\n\nMuch more can be done to put into practice this anti-bureaucratic zeal. There is perhaps no more low-hanging a fruit on this score than enforcement of theNational Environmental Protection Act, or NEPA, which requires all proposed projects that touch federal land or use federal monies (so, a huge chunk of them) to undergo an analysis on said project’s potential environmental impact.\n\nWhile an environmental review before federal projects may sound innocuous at first blush, the practice has been weaponized by activist interests. While challenges under NEPA were envisioned as an opportunity for communities and scientists to push back,nearly 60%of all challenges come from public interest groups. On average, NEPA reviews delay major projects byfour years, and ground countless others as builders weigh the risk of extended legal fights.\n\nThe administration has plenty ofoptionsto improve the NEPA process, from setting time limits on appeals to consolidating lawsuits against proposed projects and streamlining them more effectively.\n\nAnd it should move quickly to overhaul the way NEPA enforcements proceed. Late last year, a federal appeals court in Washington, D.C.,foundthat NEPA has been broadly misinterpreted, and lacks the statutory power courts have given it to-date. More legal action is no doubt on the way, but the incoming administration should take the opportunity, while it’s fate is uncertain, to at least take a sledgehammer to the abuses the law encourages.\n\nThere’s plenty more red-tape worth cutting.Permitting reformaround energy extraction could help expand the affordable, domestic energy that major projects rely on, while giving a little relief to American consumers after years of crushing inflation. The Government Accountability Office hasidentifieddozens of other regulations prone to misuse and abuse.\n\nOur current regulatory regime has squandered America’s productive potential for decades. Tens of thousands of newregulationsover the last few decades helped usher in the demise of American manufacturing. And new efforts have cost the American people directly. The Biden administration added anestimated$1.4 trillion in new regulations over just the last four years. Clearing these self-imposed hurdles can help restart domestic industry, allowing entrepreneurs and innovators to take advantage of America’s bountiful resources.\n\nAs the incoming administration rightlyfocuseson a return of American manufacturing and industry, current NEPA enforcement presents a major, avoidable stumbling block. Trump’s focus on tariffs and other trade measures could level the playing field afterdecades of global abuse. Doing so will empower domestic industry, unburdened from unfair competition withChina and other mercantilist nations, will have more room to grow stronger.\n\nBut NEPA and other burdensome regulations could strangle that effort in its cradle. And the hamstringing done by these rules and restrictions provide ample ammunition to opponents of Trump’s views on trade. UnleashingAmerica’s productivity potentialcould help put those opponents to flight, and finally set global policy on America’s terms.\n\nMore will be needed beyond just cutting the red tape that threatens a return to American industrial greatness. But the Trump-Vance administration can build on the energy of DOGE to power a serious look at some of the other lodestones across the federal government, rather than just picking off wasteful spending.",
    "author": "Drew Holden",
    "date": "Unknown",
    "category": null,
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      "https://www.commonplace.org/s/the-american-compass-podcast",
      "https://www.cnn.com/2024/12/06/business/doge-elon-musk-budget-trump-nightcap/index.html",
      "https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2024/11/24/doge-trump-musk-ramaswamy-budget/",
      "https://www.nytimes.com/2024/12/04/podcasts/the-daily/musk-doge-trump.html",
      "https://x.com/CBSNews/status/1872779494622200026",
      "https://x.com/TPPatriots/status/1861072275535020408",
      "https://fee.org/articles/5-absurd-examples-of-government-waste-in-2024/",
      "https://fee.org/articles/5-absurd-examples-of-government-waste-in-2024/",
      "https://www.epa.gov/nepa",
      "https://www.noahpinion.blog/p/no-nepa-really-is-a-problem-for-clean",
      "https://www.lockelord.com/newsandevents/publications/2024/05/quickstudy-ceq-nepa-phase-ii#:~:text=A%202020%20CEQ%20study%20found,Statement%20(%E2%80%9CEIS%E2%80%9D).",
      "https://ifp.org/a-cheat-sheet-for-nepa-judicial-reform/",
      "https://www.instituteforenergyresearch.org/regulation/appeals-court-rules-that-federal-agencies-and-courts-have-misinterpreted-nepa/",
      "https://freopp.org/whitepapers/federal-energy-permitting-reform-a-step-towards-of-a-future-with-affordable-and-reliable-power/",
      "https://usafacts.org/articles/which-government-programs-are-considered-wasteful-or-inefficient/",
      "https://www.heritage.org/government-regulation/commentary/how-washington-regulation-strangled-american-manufacturing",
      "https://budget.house.gov/press-release/chairman-arrington-responds-to_american-action-forum-aaf-report-bidens-regulations-costing-nearly-14-trillion",
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      "https://www.wsj.com/opinion/we-are-all-mercantilists-now-international-trade-policy-protectionism-50743d8a",
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    "url": "https://americancompass.org/browse-our-library/?_sft_category=multimedia",
    "title": "Browse our library",
    "text": "Oren speaks on a panel about economic policy in Trump’s second term and more with Jason Furman, Richard Burkhauser, and Kimberly Clausing.\n\nOren joins a panel discussion with Jason Furman, Richard Burkhauser, and Kimberly Clausing about what Trump’s second term’s economic policy.\n\nFeatures editor Helen Andrews joins to discuss the launch of the forthcoming Commonplace magazine from American Compass\n\nFormer Senator Phil Gramm joins Oren for a wide-ranging conversation about the merit of tariffs.\n\nFTC Chair Lina Khan joins Oren for a wide-ranging conversation about corporate power and how best to rein it in.\n\nIFP’s Santi Ruiz joins Oren to talk about government efficiency, DOGE, and how the Trump admin could revitalize the way government works.\n\nDr. Leonard Sax joins Oren to discuss the disastrous state of modern parenting and what can be done to fix it\n\nCoalition director Duncan Braid joins to discuss our Back to Work agenda of executive actions the Trump-Vance admin should pursue.\n\nHenry Olsen joins to discuss how the Republican Party can use this election’s demographic earthquake to build a lasting governing majority\n\nBatya Ungar-Sargon joins to discuss the multi-ethnic working-class coalition that elected Trump and the policies that would support them\n\nAmerican Compass Chairman Michael Needham joins Oren to discuss Trump’s landslide victory and the political realignment that made it possible.\n\nClare Morell joins the American Compass Podcast to discuss kids’ addiction to tech, and what governments can do about it.\n\nHarvard’s Sam Pressler joins to discuss the developmental crisis for young people who don’t go to college and his new policy framework, Connective Tissue, to address it.\n\nIvana Greco joins the American Compass Podcast to make sense of what parents, particularly those who stay at home with their kids, think family policy should look like.\n\nJournalist and best-selling author Sarah Smarsh joins Oren to talk about the political realignment taking place in America’s Heartland.\n\nPolicy advisor Mark DiPlacido joins Oren to discuss why and how policymakers should rethink U.S. trade with China.\n\nMarc Fasteau and Ian Fletcher join Oren to discuss their forthcoming book on industrial policy.\n\nProfessor Joshua Kleinfeld joins for a conversation about the conservative legal movement and how it intersects with politics\n\nOren is joined by Dr. Matthew Mehan to discuss Oren’s First Things lecture about how best to construct conservatism in a secular age.\n\nOren is joined by Nick Timothy, Conservative member of Parliament, to discuss the U.K.’s political realignment.\n\n©2026 American Compass, Inc. |Privacy Policy\n\nJoin our mailing list to receive our latest research, news, and commentary.\n\nSubscribe to receive updates, previews, and more.",
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    "url": "https://americancompass.org/the-edgerton-essays/",
    "title": "The Edgerton Essays",
    "text": "Today’s public square is too often closed to those without a narrow set of credentials. Politicians and pundits in Washington are consumed with ideological battles far removed from the day-to-day concerns of American workers and their families, and often seem incapable of even understanding them. Our policy debates are poorer for it, our policymakers less informed, and our fellow citizens excluded.\n\nTheEdgerton Essaysare a joint project of American Compass and the Ethics and Public Policy Center, featuring working-class Americans sharing their perspectives on what they wish policymakers knew about the challenges facing their families and communities. The goal of the essays goal is to help inform policymakers and pundits about what matters most and why to the vast majority of Americans who have no day-to-day connection to our political debates, focusing especially on those who have not earned a college degree.\n\nThe Edgerton Essays are named for Norman Rockwell’s famous 1943 painting, “Freedom of Speech.” Rockwell depicted Jim Edgerton, a farmer in their small town, rising to speak and being respectfully listened to by his neighbors. That respectful, democratic spirit is too often missing today, and what we’re hoping to cultivate with this series.",
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  {
    "url": "https://americancompass.org/productive-markets/",
    "title": "Productive Markets",
    "text": "A great benefit of the free market is the latitude it affords individuals to pursue their own self-interest however they may wish to define it. When that pursuit advances the common good as well, capitalism generates unparalleled prosperity. But the free market alone does not guarantee that individual and public interest will in fact align. Market fundamentalism’s basic error is to misunderstand this point.\n\nConservative economics distinguishes amongst free markets and recognizes that only some have the alignment between self- and public interest necessary to harness capitalism’s power for the benefit of American workers, their families and communities, and the nation. Adam Smith shows how the systemcanwork, not that it always will. Recent decades confirm that sometimes it does not. It is the productive market, not any free market regardless of conditions and outcomes, that public policy must have as its goal.\n\nAt American Compass, we work to understand the forces rendering modern markets unproductive and develop public policies that would create conditions in which capitalism can once again flourish.\n\nWe focus in particular on the parallel trends ofglobalizationandfinancialization, which have pulled capital toward activities that generate profit while undermining the nation’s prosperity. Globalization severed the bond between capital and labor, so that growth and profit no longer depended on investment in a domestic workforce. Shareholders in multinational corporations saw their wealth skyrocket while workers saw their wages stagnate. Entire industries shifted overseas, decimating communities, reducing productive capacity, and slowing innovation. Financialization severed the bond between capital and the real economy altogether, offering huge paydays for producing nothing of value. Capital and talent surged toward Wall Street, the financial sector metastasized, and real investment declined.\n\nFor more of our work on globalization, start with theRegaining Our Balancecollection. TheWhere’s the Growth?Atlas provides an overview of the data on globalization’s costs and, conversely, the failure to generate promised benefits.Searching for Capitalism in the Wreckage of Globalizationprovides an explanation for why globalization has gone wrong. AndThe Balancing Actoffers a comprehensive set of responses for policymakers.\n\nOn financialization, start withWe’re Just Speculating Here…, which shows how U.S. corporations have shifted their behavior from consistent investment in their capacity to provide goods and services to active disinvestment for the sake of disgorging cash back to shareholders. OurCoin-Flip Capitalism Primerhighlights the corrosive role played by private equity and hedge funds, which collect hundreds of billions of dollars in fees while performing no better than the stock market.Confronting Coin-Flip Capitalismmakes the case that American financial markets are misallocating capital, talent, and risk in ways that directly weaken the economy and suggests a range of reforms. And ourCorporate Actual Responsibilitycollection considers the private sector’s obligations to the nation and the constraints necessary to ensure they are fulfilled.\n\nOur work also emphasizes the unique role of manufacturing in an advanced economy, which investors may not consider when pursuing their own profit—thus the need for public policy to bring their self-interest and the public interest into closer alignment. Our work on semiconductors, including theGuide to the Semiconductor Industryandadvocacy for the CHIPS Act, provides a case study of the broader phenomenon. OurMoving the Chainssymposium brought together a wide range of policy experts to explore the many levers that policymakers have at their disposal.",
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    "url": "https://americancompass.org/industry/",
    "title": "Industry",
    "text": "The American economy, like any developed nation’s, is predominantly services-based. Most of what Americans produce and consume is health care, education, leisure and hospitality, entertainment, finance, and so on. Even in a factory town, more people likely work for the hospital, schools, and restaurants than on the shop floor.\n\nBut all that services-based prosperity is built atop the foundation of the goods-producing sector. Industries like agriculture, manufacturing, and resource extraction generate most of the tradable products that allow local economies to sustain themselves. If people in a region are all cutting each other’s hair, what will they export to other regions in exchange for the vehicles, computers, and medicines they need? Those same physical industries deliver the most productivity growth, which fuels the service sector’s expanding scope and rising wages. They support broader ecosystems of suppliers and customers. And they foster technological progress. Efforts to retain research and development while manufacturing departs have repeatedly failed; the expertise, investment, and innovation ultimately follow the production away.\n\nThe goods-producing sector also plays a unique role in national defense and resilience. Its knowledge- and capital-intensive operations require years to develop and, once lost, are not easily rebuilt. Its locations tend to be more rural and dispersed, providing a vital counterbalance to the urban agglomeration of industries like finance and technology. Its jobs tend to be among the highest-productivity and best-paid ones available for men without college degrees.\n\nFor all these reasons, the economists who have insisted that Americans should not worry about what we make here, or whether we make anything here, are simply wrong. Fortunately, far fewer people are listening to them than in the past. Unfortunately, recovering from the damage they have done will take a generation.\n\nAt American Compass, we work to understand industry’s social and economic value and the reasons for its decline in recent decades. We develop policies to support its renewal.\n\nWe are the leading proponents of American industrial policy, and argued for over a year for passage of what became the CHIPS and Science Act, telling the story ofAmerica’s Microchip Slip, preparing a comprehensiveGuide to the Semiconductor Industry, and rebutting objections point-by-point inPass the CHIPS, Please. Drawing lessons from another industry,The Import Quota That Remade the Auto Industrytells the story of the quota imposed on Japanese auto imports during the Reagan administration. More broadly, theRebooting the American Systemcollection makes the comprehensive case for robust industrial policy, from the perspectives of theory, policy, and history, whileWhere’s the Growthdepicts the cost of allowing American industry to be hollowed out and shipped overseas.\n\nAmerica faltered because policymakers neglected and even discouraged industry while the governments of other nations attracted and supported it. With concerted action to level the playing field, or even tilt it back, we can win again. TheMoving the Chainscollection presents nine strategies for America to retake global leadership in industry and innovation, with proposals and analysis from prominent scholars across the political spectrum in a variety of fields.",
    "author": "Unknown",
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    "category": "Industry",
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    "url": "http://americancompass.org/browse-our-library/?_sft_category=multimedia",
    "title": "Browse our library",
    "text": "Oren speaks on a panel about economic policy in Trump’s second term and more with Jason Furman, Richard Burkhauser, and Kimberly Clausing.\n\nOren joins a panel discussion with Jason Furman, Richard Burkhauser, and Kimberly Clausing about what Trump’s second term’s economic policy.\n\nFeatures editor Helen Andrews joins to discuss the launch of the forthcoming Commonplace magazine from American Compass\n\nFormer Senator Phil Gramm joins Oren for a wide-ranging conversation about the merit of tariffs.\n\nFTC Chair Lina Khan joins Oren for a wide-ranging conversation about corporate power and how best to rein it in.\n\nIFP’s Santi Ruiz joins Oren to talk about government efficiency, DOGE, and how the Trump admin could revitalize the way government works.\n\nDr. Leonard Sax joins Oren to discuss the disastrous state of modern parenting and what can be done to fix it\n\nCoalition director Duncan Braid joins to discuss our Back to Work agenda of executive actions the Trump-Vance admin should pursue.\n\nHenry Olsen joins to discuss how the Republican Party can use this election’s demographic earthquake to build a lasting governing majority\n\nBatya Ungar-Sargon joins to discuss the multi-ethnic working-class coalition that elected Trump and the policies that would support them\n\nAmerican Compass Chairman Michael Needham joins Oren to discuss Trump’s landslide victory and the political realignment that made it possible.\n\nClare Morell joins the American Compass Podcast to discuss kids’ addiction to tech, and what governments can do about it.\n\nHarvard’s Sam Pressler joins to discuss the developmental crisis for young people who don’t go to college and his new policy framework, Connective Tissue, to address it.\n\nIvana Greco joins the American Compass Podcast to make sense of what parents, particularly those who stay at home with their kids, think family policy should look like.\n\nJournalist and best-selling author Sarah Smarsh joins Oren to talk about the political realignment taking place in America’s Heartland.\n\nPolicy advisor Mark DiPlacido joins Oren to discuss why and how policymakers should rethink U.S. trade with China.\n\nMarc Fasteau and Ian Fletcher join Oren to discuss their forthcoming book on industrial policy.\n\nProfessor Joshua Kleinfeld joins for a conversation about the conservative legal movement and how it intersects with politics\n\nOren is joined by Dr. Matthew Mehan to discuss Oren’s First Things lecture about how best to construct conservatism in a secular age.\n\nOren is joined by Nick Timothy, Conservative member of Parliament, to discuss the U.K.’s political realignment.\n\n©2026 American Compass, Inc. |Privacy Policy\n\nJoin our mailing list to receive our latest research, news, and commentary.\n\nSubscribe to receive updates, previews, and more.",
    "author": "Unknown",
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  {
    "url": "https://americancompass.org/stop-selling-the-rope/",
    "title": "Stop Selling the Rope",
    "text": "The United States and its allies hold decisive advantages in artificial intelligence semiconductor design and manufacturing—two of the few critical technology sectors where American leadership remains intact. This paper presents an unequivocal America First framework for growing and maintaining an American advantage vital to both economic competitiveness and national security: prohibit all sales of advanced AI chips and semiconductor manufacturing equipment to China.\n\nChina’s domestic AI chip production remains severely constrained, with chips lagging U.S. technology by at least one generation. Recent procurement data has identified $16 billion in Chinese orders for American chips, and the People’s Liberation Army has identified AI as central to achieving military modernization and advantage. The dual-use nature of AI technology and China’s Military-Civil Fusion doctrine make civilian/military distinctions effectively meaningless.\n\nSince China’s accession to the WTO, wave upon wave of western corporations have surged into the Chinese market, hoping to gain a foothold that could translate into long-term growth and profits. The result has always been the same: technology transfer, rapid gains by CCP-favored indigenous firms, loss of leadership. The United States cannot allow this to happen in AI.\n\nThis paper recommends five measures:\n\nThe United States today faces a choice: learn the lessons of the past quarter-century, or trade away American leadership in a vital future technology with the hope that following the same playbook will somehow yield a different outcome.\n\nOver the past 25 years, the U.S. has surrendered sector after sector to China in a misguided pursuit of the promises of globalization. From solar panels and electric vehicles to telecommunications to rare earths, China now has effective dominance, leaving American supply chains vulnerable to severe disruption, American producers with little market share, and American workers with fewer opportunities and lower wages.\n\nThe design of advanced semiconductors, especially the GPUs used to train and run AI models, remains one domain where the United States maintains a decisive global advantage. Firms from the U.S. and allied nations, most notably Japan, the Netherlands, and Taiwan, as well as Germany and South Korea, also maintain a decisive advantage in the machinery and facilities needed to produce those chips. As a result, China is currently lagging well behind the U.S. in its ability to produce leading-edge “compute”—the computational power that allows for the training and running of AI models.\n\nChina already has the motive to close that gap. By selling either chips or chipmaking equipment to the CCP, the U.S. is providing the means. If the U.S. chooses an America First chip export strategy, by contrast, our leaders have the opportunity to establish definitive American leadership in advanced AI. Unfortunately, the same arguments made by business leaders decades ago, which led to trading away past technological leadership in critical sectors, are being echoed today in this sector:America needs to “addict” China to American technology.If U.S. firms gain a toehold in China, their technologies will become the Chinese standard. But if we stay out of China, the Chinese will quickly develop alternatives.\n\nThese arguments were bad in 1999. They are unforgivable in 2025, when everyone knows that China grants access to its market only for as long as it takes to steal technology, transfer know-how, and then push foreign firms out. Rather than transfer its advantage and enrich an adversary, the United States should maintain the advantage and transform it into era-defining leadership.\n\nFailure to act poses a severe risk to U.S. national security and economic competitiveness.\n\nAny export of advanced AI chips or chipmaking equipment to China must be understood as supporting its military, either by empowering its leading AI labs or by directly providing computing power to the People’s Liberation Army (PLA). Ultimately, the dual-use nature of AI makes civilian/military distinctions meaningless—a reality the CCP will exploit through its Military-Civil Fusion approach to critical technology.1U.S. Department of State,U.S. Technology in the Military-Civil Fusion Strategy Revision, August 27, 2025.The same AI capabilities used in commercial markets to optimize supply chains can be used to coordinate military logistics; the same optical systems used to inspect factories can guide weapons.\n\nWith trillions of dollars of potential value on the table, from both sales of AI chips and AI-driven productivity gains across sectors, the economic stakes are also extremely high. At best, selling advanced AI chips to China would mean accelerating China’s economic progress and strengthening its competitiveness relative to America’s. At worst, it would mean selling the Chinese Communist Party the rope with which to hang the United States, its allies, and the democratic world broadly, trading away our hard-earned advantage for short-sighted, short-term gains today.\n\nThe United States must act quickly to assert an America First chip export strategy. The guiding principle of a truly America First strategy is simple, sensible, and urgent: prohibit the sale of advanced AI chips and manufacturing equipment to China, working with allies to prioritize American and allied control of advanced AI capacity.\n\nThe United States and its close allies dominate the advanced AI chip supply chain. Given the technological complexity of the design and manufacturing processes, China is and will remain reliant on these suppliers for these chips for years to come.\n\nThe U.S. directly controls the design stage of the AI chip supply chain, with three American companies accounting for over 75% of advanced chip design.2TrendForce, “Global Top 10 IC Design Houses See 49% YoY Growth in 2024, NVIDIA Commands Half the Market,” March 17, 2025.U.S. partners control the manufacturing process, particularly Taiwan: TSMC manufactures 80–90% of sub-7nm chips (mainly in Taiwan, though with increasing output in Arizona).3TrendForce, “TSMC’s Advanced Processes Remain Resilient Amid Challenges,” April 8, 2024.Two of the three companies that produce high-bandwidth memory (HBM) are Korean (Samsung and SK Hynix) and one is American (Micron).4Select Committee on the Chinese Communist Party,Selling the Forges of the Future, October 7, 2025; Jeongku Choi and MS Hwang, “Samsung’s Q2 2025 Memory Performance Disappoints but Signals H2 Recovery,”Counterpoint Research, July 31, 2025.\n\nThe U.S. and a few key allies together control the production of the semiconductor manufacturing equipment (SME) required to conduct that manufacturing. The Dutch company ASML is the sole producer of the extreme ultraviolet (EUV) lithography machines needed to make the most advanced chips. According to the U.S. government, “the United States, Japan, and the Netherlands account for 90 percent of semiconductor manufacturing equipment market share.”5U.S. Department of Commerce, Bureau of Industry and Security.Assessment of the Status of the Microelectronics Industrial Base in the United States. December 21, 2023. “This is largely on the strength of several key companies: U.S.-based Applied Materials, Lam Research, and KLA Corporation, Japan-based Tokyo Electron, and Netherlands-based ASML.”Private-sector sources concur:\n\nU.S.-headquartered companies lead in design and core IP, and command almost half the global market share in semiconductor manufacturing equipment (SME). Most of the remaining global market share for SME is in allied countries, including the Netherlands and Japan, whose companies conduct significant manufacturing and R&D in the United States.6Semiconductor Industry Association,2025 State of the U.S. Semiconductor Industry, July 10, 2025.\n\nThis concentration leaves China extremely dependent on U.S., Japanese, and Dutch SME and makes effective control possible—if the U.S. acts now and denies China’s attempts to use access to U.S. technology to steal the advantage.7Select Committee on the Chinese Communist Party,Selling the Forges of the Future.\n\nWith respect to SME, the United States already imposes various export restrictions on sales to China, as do key SME-producing allies like Japan and the Netherlands. These restrictions have successfully impeded China’s advanced production capabilities. However, as detailed in a recent investigation by the House Select Committee on the Strategic Competition between the United States and the Chinese Communist Party, this control regime has significant gaps.8Ibid.The Select Committee finds that “five restricted (i.e., on the U.S. Government’s Chinese military company list, investment restriction list, or Entity List) semiconductor companies in China were also top customers of each Toolmaker [meaning the key U.S., Japanese, and Dutch SME producers] from 2022 to 2024.” For four of these producers, currently restricted Chinese companies accounted for 45% of combined revenue between 2022 and 2025, demonstrating the appetite of Chinese purchasers—a majority of which are state-owned enterprises—for whatever SME is available.9Ibid.\n\nThe U.S. and its allies apply some countrywide export controls on SME to China, but only on the most cutting-edge technology. This has succeeded in denying China access to ASML’s EUV lithography (capable of producing chips 5nm and under, though also used for 7nm chips), for example—but not to all of ASML’s less advanced but still highly capable deep ultraviolet (DUV) lithography, which is used to produce chips between 40nm and 7nm. According to the Select Committee report, China is attempting “to use DUV to produce even smaller nodes, including 5nm,” and while such SME produces advanced chips at reduced efficiency and with reduced yield, China is attempting to make up the difference through sheer volume by actively acquiring as many of ASML’s DUV machines as possible.10Ibid.Seventy percent of ASML’s DUV sales in 2024 were to China.11Ibid.Nor do American countrywide export controls apply to node-agnostic SME, the equipment that is needed to produce chips of any kind, advanced or otherwise.\n\nThe U.S. also imposes entity-specific SME export controls, which can reduce acquisition by entities of concern, but ultimately represents merely a hurdle to overcome, not an outright denial. Chinese companies are adept at “entity obfuscation,” and BIS itself has approved a majority of license applications for exports of SME even to listed entities.12Ibid.Nor are U.S. and allied export control regimes well-aligned. U.S. SME producers face greater constraints relative to allied producers, which continue to sell to China in large volumes.\n\nWhile working cooperatively with allies to impose controls is ideal, these meaningful gaps in the current SME control regime must be addressed—unilaterally if necessary. Because U.S. technology is so deeply integrated throughout the supply chain, the U.S. can and should use the Foreign-Produced Direct Product Rule (FDPR)—which allows the Department of Commerce to restrict foreign-to-foreign transactions of products that incorporate U.S. technology—to exercise unilateral control over export of components that sit outside of direct American control but utilize American technology. In order to minimize conflict with allies over unilateral action, the U.S. should consider establishing an escalation process, whereby allies can meet key thresholds for imposing their own export controls before FDPR kicks in. In addition, the U.S. should begin by taking a surgical approach to FDPR enforcement, focusing on the least intrusive means of accomplishing the goal of limiting SME exports to China. (For example, restricting the sale by Japanese firms of a critical component of DUV lithography machines when the final buyer is in the PRC.)13These suggestions are broadly consonant with the Select Committee’s recommendation to “dramatically expand country-wide controls for the PRC, with a licensing policy of presumption of denial, to apply toany SME and related components and consumables,that can be used in an advanced or foundational fab, utilizing FDPR if necessary.”Finally, the controls should come with positive incentives for allies. What incentives are most suitable will depend on the interests of the nation in question, but increased cooperation on critical mineral supply chain resilience would be a good place to start. China has repeatedly used its chokehold on the global critical mineral supply chain as a tool of geopolitical power—including as a means of signaling its own aspiration to control the global semiconductor supply chain and AI stack.14Keith Bradsher and Meaghan Tobin, “China’s Rare Earth Exports Face New Scrutiny Amid Global Supply Concerns,”The New York Times, October 9, 2025.The U.S. and its allies will require mutual cooperation on this front.15Zolan Kanno-Youngs, “To Counter China’s Hold on Rare Minerals, Trump Turns to Australia,”The New York Times, October 20, 2025.\n\nWhen it comes to selling chips themselves, the United States has vacillated from prohibition to permissiveness. In response to restrictions imposed by the Biden administration, Nvidia designed its H20 chip specifically for sale to China. In April 2025, the Trump administration announced it would ban the H20’s sale to China. A few months later, the administration reversed course, announcing it would allow H20 sales.16NVIDIA Newsroom, “NVIDIA CEO Jensen Huang Promotes AI in Washington, DC and China,” NVIDIA Blog, July 14, 2025; Demetri Sevastopulo and Michael Acton, “Nvidia and AMD to Pay 15% of China Chip Sale Revenues to US Government,”Financial Times, August 11, 2025.As of October 2025, the administration had not yet articulated its preferred long-term approach to the strategic question of advanced AI chip exports to China.\n\nDespite its military and economic ambitions, China meaningfully trails the United States in AI capability, due to its limited capabilities in the design and manufacture of advanced AI chips.17By “advanced AI chips,” we mean high-performance semiconductors—such as graphics processing units (GPUs), application-specific integrated circuits (ASICs), or field-programmable gate arrays (FPGAs)—engineered to accelerate neural network training and inference through massive parallel computation and high-bandwidth memory.Producing leading-edge chips requires both sophisticated designs and the ability to produce chips at the 3nm node, both of which China currently lacks. On design, China lags the U.S. by several years, in large part because there is no reason to design chips they cannot produce. On production, however, they are far behind. Despite limitations, current export controls on SME have kept China from producing leading-edge chips, while limits on imported HBM (which is packaged in the final chip) have constrained overall capacity.\n\nAccording to SemiAnalysis, China’s production capability is severely limited: about 500,000 Ascend units (mostly 910Bs) in 2024 and about 800,000 (about 650,000 of which were the more advanced 910Cs) in 2025. Citing limitations on HBM, SemiAnalysis predicts production of only 250,000–300,000 Ascend 910Cs in 2026.18Dylan Patel et al., “Huawei Ascend Production Ramp: Die Banks, TSMC Continued Production, HBM is The Bottleneck,”SemiAnalysis, September 8, 2025. Chinese production is severely hampered by HBM availability and low manufacturing yields (the percentage of functional chips produced from a wafer). Reliable estimates are hard to come by, but industry experts suggest a range of 30–50% yields, compared to more than 90% yields for U.S.-allied manufacturers.This is compared to U.S. production of 3.67 million Nvidia B300-equivalent chips in 2025. (Each B300 is roughly five-times more powerful than a 910C chip, so this is the equivalent of about 18 million 910C-equivalent chips.)19Institute for Progress, forthcoming.Even as China reportedly works to grow its domestic semiconductor capacity,20Zijing Wu, “China Seeks to Triple Output of AI Chips in Race with the US,”Financial Times, August 27, 2025.it remains hamstrung by controls on semiconductor manufacturing equipment, which cap Chinese firms’ ability to compete at the leading edge.\n\nThis hardware deficit is serious—for now. Of 22 notable Chinese AI models, only two were allegedly trained on Chinese chips.21Erich Grunewald and Tim Fist,“Countering AI Chip Smuggling Has Become a National Security Priority: An Updated Playbook for Preventing AI Chip Smuggling to the PRC,”Center for a New American Security, June 11 2025; Veronika Blablová and Robi Rahman, “Why China Isn’t About to Leap Ahead of the West on Compute,”Epoch AI: Gradient Updates, July 26, 2025.DeepSeek’s market share collapsed after it confronted a shortage of Nvidia H20 chips, despite its cost advantages.22Wei Zhou, AJ Kourabi, and Dylan Patel, “DeepSeek Debrief: >128 Days Later,”SemiAnalysis, July 3, 2025; Qianer Liu and Juro Osawa, “DeepSeek’s Progress Stalled by U.S. Export Controls,”The Information, June 26, 2025.Chinese clusters need 300,000 Huawei Ascend 910C chips to match 100,000 Nvidia B200s.23Lennart Heim, “China’s Models Close the Gap,”ChinaTalk, April 29, 2025.Huawei CEO Ren Zhengfei’s admission toPeople’s Dailyis telling: “The United States has exaggerated Huawei’s achievements. Huawei is not that great. We have to work hard to reach their evaluation. … Our single chip is still behind the U.S. by a generation.”24Brenda Goh, “Huawei Chips Are One Generation Behind U.S. Peers but Firm Finding Workarounds, CEO Says,”Reuters, June 10, 2025.\n\nThe path to realizing Xi Jinping’s dream of a fully modernized PLA with world-beating “intelligent warfighting” capability, supported by and protective of a globally dominant economy that leads on AI, depends on access to chips to train and run leading-edge models. Reports that the PLA has submitted multiple requests for Nvidia H20 chips in the past year,25Sobolik, Michael (@michaelsobolik). “The People’s Liberation Army put in multiple requests for H20 chips over the past year. You can call it ‘virtue signaling’ or ‘faux hawkery’ all you want, but the PLA is serious about its chip procurement.” X, October 23, 2025.the $16 billion in orders for H20 chips that Chinese companies placed in Q1 2025,26Tao Burga, Arushi Gupta, and Tim Fist,“The H20 Problem: Inference, Supercomputers, and US Export Control Gaps,”Institute for Progress, April 15, 2025.and the 700,000 orders for H20s after the administration reversed its export ban27Qianer Liu, “China Demands Companies to Halt Nvidia Chip Orders Over Security Concerns,”The Information, August 12, 2025.should be understood in this context.\n\nIn the Chinese military’s view, mitigating the U.S. advantage in AI and allowing rapid AI development in China would enable it to achieve parity with American military capabilities—or leapfrog them.28Sam Bresnick,China’s Military AI Roadblocks: PRC Perspectives on Technological Challenges to Intelligentized Warfare, Center for Security and Emerging Technologies, June 2024.The Chinese Communist Party (CCP) frames its AI ambitions in these terms, invoking the desire not only for economic strength but military might. AI dominance is integral to the CCP’s military strategy.\n\nPresident Xi Jinping has expressed his desire for the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) to “basically complete” its modernization by 2035.29U.S. Department of Defense,Military and Security Developments Involving the People’s Republic of China 2024, Annual Report to Congress, December 18, 2024.The PLA conceptualizes this modernization as a process of technological development: from “mechanization” (deploying modern weapons systems and other military platforms) to “informatization” (linking those modern systems to GPS and other networks) and finally to “intelligentization” (the integration of AI and other leading tech for purposes of “intelligent warfare”).30In Chinese: mechanization 机械化, informatization 信息化, and intelligentization (智能化). See Bresnick,China’s Military AI Roadblocks; Jacob Stokes,Military Artificial Intelligence, the People’s Liberation Army, and U.S.-China Strategic Competition,testimony before the U.S.-China Economic and Security Review Commission, February 1, 2024; Kevin Pollpeter and Amanda Kerrigan,The PLA and Intelligent Warfare: A Preliminary Analysis, Center for Naval Analyses, October 2021.As far back as 2020, the PLA understood itself to have “basically achieved mechanization and made significant progress in informationization.”31“Regular Press Conference of the Ministry of National Defense on November 26,” Ministry of National Defense of the People’s Republic of China, November 29, 2020.Intelligentization is the domain in which the PLA believes it has a “rare strategic opportunity…to overtake others.”32Sam Bresnick,China’s Military AI Roadblocks: PRC Perspectives on Technological Challenges to Intelligentized Warfare, Center for Security and Emerging Technologies, June 2024; see also “Lieutenant General Liu Guozhi: The development of military intelligence is a strategic opportunity for our army to overtake others,” [刘国治中将:军事智能化发展是我军弯道超车的战略机遇], CCTV News, October 22, 2017.The PLA is aggressively seeking to demonstrate significant progress on this front by 2027—the PLA’s centenary and the next CCP-set milestone on the path to 2035 and 2049.33U.S. Department of Defense,Military and Security Developments Involving the People’s Republic of China 2024.\n\nOne of the PLA’s “core operational concepts” is that the future of military conflict will require dominance in “Multi-Domain Precision Warfare.”34U.S. Department of Defense,Military and Security Developments Involving the People’s Republic of China 2022, Annual Report to Congress, November 29, 2022.According to Jacob Stokes of the Center for a New American Security, the concept:\n\n… posits that the very networking that gives the U.S. military its power creates interdependencies between its forces, which are also vulnerabilities that can be exploited. Thus, rather than needing to destroy U.S. enemy forces directly—ship-to-ship or tank-to-tank—China can attack the weak points linking U.S. systems and domains together and thereby neutralize or overwhelm U.S. advantages. Those weak points can include internet, satellite, or electromagnetic communications links as well as logistical supply systems. AI is a critical part of this strategy because, in the dynamic environment of an actual conflict, identifying and targeting U.S. vulnerabilities will require sensing, relaying, and processing vast amounts of information at a speed only computers can match.35Stokes,Military Artificial Intelligence.\n\n“PLA strategists,” according to the U.S. Department of Defense, “view warfare as a science,” and believe that achieving fully “intelligentized” warfighting capability requires AI leadership across a range of applications:\n\nPLA strategists have stated new technologies will increase the speed and tempo of future warfare, and that operationalization of AI will be necessary to improve the speed and quality of information processing by reducing battlefield uncertainty and providing decision making advantage over potential adversaries. The PLA is researching various applications for AI including support for missile guidance, target detection and identification, and autonomous systems. The PLA is exploring next-generation operational concepts for intelligentized warfare, such as attrition warfare by intelligent swarms, cross-domain mobile warfare, AI based space confrontation, and cognitive control operations. The PLA also considers unmanned systems to be critical intelligentized technologies, and is pursuing greater autonomy for unmanned aerial, surface, and underwater vehicles to enable manned and unmanned hybrid formations, swarm attacks, optimized logistic support, and disaggregated ISR, among other capabilities.36U.S. Department of Defense,Military and Security Developments Involving the People’s Republic of China 2022.\n\nAccording to the U.S. Intelligence Community’s 2025 Annual Threat Assessment report, “China almost certainly has a multifaceted, national-level strategy designed to displace the United States as the world’s most influential AI power by 2030.”37Office of the Director of National Intelligence,2025 Annual Threat Assessment of the U.S. Intelligence Community, March 18, 2025.This includes the CCP’s Military-Civil Fusion strategies, through which “the CCP is acquiring the intellectual property, key research, and technological advancements of the world’s citizens, researchers, scholars, and private industry in order to advance military aims,” and which thus render the distinction between military and civilian technological development meaningless.38U.S. Department of State,What Is MCF One-Pager, May 2020; U.S. Department of State,U.S. Technology in the Military-Civil Fusion Strategy Revision.This strategy is personally supervised by Xi and results in “Joint research institutions, academia, and private firms… all being exploited to build the PLA’s future military systems—often without their knowledge or consent.”39U.S. Department of State,What Is MCF One-Pager.\n\nSenior U.S. State Department officials confirm PLA integration of commercial AI systems, with DeepSeek models directly aiding military applications.40Michael Martina and Stephen Nellis, “DeepSeek Aids China’s Military and Evaded Export Controls, U.S. Official Says,”Reuters, June 23, 2025.The PLA also reportedly submitted multiple requests for Nvidia H20 chips in 2025, underscoring the military applications of this technology.41Michael Sobolik (@michaelsobolik), “The People’s Liberation Army put in multiple requests for H20 chips over the past year. You can call it “virtue signaling” or “faux hawkery” all you want, but it’s reality,”X, August 16, 2025.\n\nAdvanced AI capacity will be critical to the future of warfare and military dominance. The CCP understands itself to be in an aggressive arms race with the United States for that capacity. The United States currently has a decisive advantage in that race. The CCP’s military ambitions require closing that gap; its quickest path to that goal is American willingness to freely sell it the chips and chipmaking equipment to do it.\n\nAI is poised to become the next general-purpose technology, with applications ranging from biomedical research to education to fashion design to drone warfare. The United States currently dominates much of the AI “stack,” from leading-edge semiconductor design to world-leading labs that train and deploy AI models. If the U.S. can maintain this lead, the benefits will compound over time, creating lasting advantages. If it chooses to carelessly sell its edge away to a near-peer adversary, the loss will be generational.\n\nAs AI diffuses throughout the economy, its benefits will directly scale with compute. With ten times China’s compute capacity, America can deploy proportionally more AI capacity across every economic sector, creating compounding advantages in drug discovery, logistics, research, manufacturing, and innovation itself.42Heim, “China’s Models Close the Gap.”The U.S. currently hosts roughly 75% of global compute, while China lags behind at 14%.43Konstantin F. Pilz et al., “AI Supercomputers: Performance Share by Country,”Epoch AI, June 5, 2025.\n\nFor its part, China is desperate for an AI-driven economic boom. In August 2025, the State Council of China released its official view on the matter.44State Council of the People’s Republic of China, “Opinions of the State Council on Deepening the Implementation of the ‘Artificial Intelligence Plus’ Initiative,” August 26, 2025.ItsOpinions on Deeply Implementing the “Artificial Intelligence Plus” Actioncalls for embedding AI in every facet of economic life, from industry and consumer applications to science and technology, with the goal of creating an AI-powered “intelligent economy”—and ultimately an “intelligent society”—in the next few years.45Peng Zhang, “China Releases ‘AI Plus’ Policy: A Brief Analysis,”Geopolitechs, August 26, 2025.The State Council’s stated goal is to\n\n[P]romote the broad and deep integration of artificial intelligence with all sectors and domains of the economy and society, reshape paradigms of human production and daily life, foster a revolutionary leap in productivity and profound changes in production relations, and accelerate the formation of a new form of intelligent economy and intelligent society…Guided by Xi Jinping Thought on Socialism with Chinese Characteristics.46State Council, “Opinions on AI+ Initiative.”\n\nWhen CCP leaders say they are betting China’s future economic dominance on AI, U.S. policymakers should believe them.\n\nWith respect to who can purchase those chips that are produced, economic tradeoffs need to be considered. The AI chip industry faces significant bottlenecks and has repeatedly struggled to meet demand. In early 2025, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman reported that its GPT 4.5 model release was delayed due to a lack of compute capacity.47Jowi Morales, “OpenAI has run out of GPUs, says Sam Altman — GPT-4.5 rollout delayed due to lack of processing power,”Tom’s Hardware, February 28, 2025.Upon release, Nvidia’s Blackwell chip was reportedly sold out for the following year.48Anton Shilov, “Nvidia’s Blackwell GPUs are sold out for the next 12 months — chipmaker to gain market share in 2025,”Tom’s Hardware, October 11, 2024.High-bandwidth memory (HBM) supplied by SK Hynix is similarly constrained, with reports in May 2025 noting that its 2025 capacity was nearly sold out.49Joyce Lee and Heekyong Yang, “Nvidia Supplier SK Hynix Says HBM Chips Almost Sold Out for 2025,”Reuters, May 2, 2024.On Nvidia’s latest earnings call in late August 2025, CEO Jensen Huang boasted that “everything’s sold out,”50NVIDIA Corporation, “Q2 FY2026 Earnings Call Transcript,”Yahoo Finance, August 27, 2025.while theWall Street Journalreports that “supply-chain constraints” are a key limiting factor on the company’s growth.51Asa Fitch, “Nvidia’s ‘Wow’ Factor Is Fading,”Wall Street Journal, September 9, 2025.\n\nAmerican chip designers may wish to expand their market share in China to further globalize their reach, but in some cases their exports do not simply boost China’s fortunes but actively reallocate capacity away from the United States in the process.\n\nMost analysts estimate the economic value of that computing power in the trillions of dollars,52Jennifer Sor, “Morgan Stanley Sees the AI Productivity Boom Adding $16 Trillion to the Stock Market’s Value,”Business Insider, August 18, 2025.dwarfing any incremental revenue that chipmakers could secure by filling Chinese demand.53Fazian Farooque, “Nvidia’s Big Week: Earnings Loom as China Deal Clears Path,”Yahoo Finance, August 25, 2025.In celebrating the mutual gains from trade, economists assume that the parties to the exchange face the full costs and capture the full benefits of the deals they make. And indeed, selling chips to China may be an entirely rational choice for the profit-maximizing chipmaker. But where the security risk and economic opportunity for the nation dwarf the narrow pecuniary concerns of the deal, free trade can grievously harm the national interest. It is for policymakers, not CEOs, to decide whether the United States benefits more from dominating AI compute or cashing a few extra checks.\n\nOn March 1, 2000, the Clinton administration issued a press release celebrating the U.S.-China WTO Accession deal. Calling the deal “A Clear Win for U.S. High Technology,” the White House gloated that China would “open its internet and telecom markets to investment and services, and provide stronger protection of intellectual property. This will allow the United States to participate in building China’s information infrastructure.”54The White House, “President Clinton Announces New Initiatives to Improve Education,” March 1, 2000.A group of 200 high-tech CEOs agreed, declaring that not only would permanent normal trade relations (PNTR) with China expose “the Chinese to our American business practices, values and perspectives,” but that it would “also facilitate the development and spread of information technologies, including the Internet, ensuring that American firms will be in a position to help shape the continued evolution of China’s economic and social environment.”55The White House, “Fact Sheet on Granting China Permanent Normal Trade Relations,” April 3, 2000.\n\nOf course, the United States did indeed participate in building China’s information infrastructure—by handing over American technology, which China studied, replaced domestically, and then sought to displace globally. The CCP playbook is consistent:\n\nAcquire → Indigenize → Dominate → Weaponize\n\nChina obtains foreign technology through joint ventures or forced transfers, develops domestic alternatives, uses predatory subsidies to destroy global competition, then leverages market dominance for geopolitical ends. The “addiction thesis”—the belief that China would remain dependent on U.S. technology, benefiting both nations and creating American leverage—proved decisively and disastrously wrong. In industry after industry, the U.S. traded away technological dominance for short-term financial gain and is now paying the price.\n\nThis pattern is demonstrable in many sectors. Huawei is now the leading provider of 5G infrastructure in the world.56Ketan Gandhi, “Top 5G Infrastructure Companies in the World | 2025,” Expert Market Research.China’s global market share of solar panels grew to over 80% by 2021, despite the United States pioneering much of the underlying technology.57International Energy Agency (IEA),Solar PV Global Supply Chains, IEA, Paris, August 2022.China controls 90% of global rare earth processing58Keith Bradsher, “China’s Rare Earth Export Restrictions Could Disrupt Global Supply Chains,”The New York Times, June 3, 2025.and 75% of global lithium-ion battery production, both of which are other sectors once dominated by the United States before offshoring to China.59Teo Lombardo, Leonardo Paoli, Araceli Fernandez Pales, and Timur Gül, “TheBattery Industry Has Entered a New Phase,” International Energy Agency, March 5, 2025.\n\nAdvanced AI chip design and manufacture is one of the few critical sectors in which the U.S. and its allies retain the kind of dominance the U.S. once enjoyed in many others. The Trump administration understands the danger of unfettered trade with China better than any administration in living memory. It is critical that it not repeat America’s failed experiments with attempting to control the CCP through the free trade of American technology into China.\n\nThe answer is not to send China the technology the CCP wishes to dominate. It is a policy of full denial of access to the technology that can most effectively accelerate China’s AI progress. Without that access, the CCP will continue to struggle. Even exporting non-leading-edge (by American standards) chips to China, such as the Nvidia H20, extends the country’s AI capabilities by months, if not years.60Burga, Gupta, and Fist, “The H20 Problem.”Conversely, constraining China’s compute access has compounding benefits over time: as each generation of AI model demands more compute, it will fall further and further behind.\n\nSome argue that gaining a foothold in China is critical to maintaining the U.S. lead because it will disincentivize Chinese industry from building its own indigenous capacity. Yet this is precisely the playbook China has utilized repeatedly to great success. Selling SME to China will only facilitate development of its own leading-edge chips and semiconductor ecosystem. Access to this technology, and the expertise required to deploy it, will only accelerate development of indigenous alternatives that can and will be substituted when they are ready. The CCP will not relent in its push for indigenization, and the American technology will simply function as a bridge until Chinese firms can catch up.\n\nDirect chip sales are no safer. Access to more compute now will not slow China’s push for indigenous alternatives, which is driven not by firm-level profit motives but by the CCP’s commitment to its geopolitical and economic goals. While it is true that advanced AI chips require proprietary software ecosystems that benefit from scale, making models built for those ecosystems difficult to port elsewhere, there is no reason to believe that China’s short-term operation within those ecosystems would slow the development of Chinese alternatives. Faith in the power of an American ecosystem fails twice over:\n\nFrom a corporate perspective, the massive Chinese market is tempting. But short-term corporate profits for a few American companies and minimal revenue to the U.S. Treasury are not worth trading away the most valuable economic advantage in modern history or helping America’s main geopolitical adversary achieve military parity.\n\nThe goal of an America First chip export policy should be to assert American and allied control throughout the entire AI supply chain and the full advanced AI stack, from chipmaking tools to model training, using that control to maximize the U.S. advantage over China in AI compute and capability.\n\nAs the President’s AI Action Plan states, “Advanced AI compute is essential to the AI era, enabling both economic dynamism and novel military capabilities. Denying our foreign adversaries access to this resource, then, is a matter of both geostrategic competition and national security.”61The White House,America’s AI Action Plan, July 2025.",
    "author": "American Compass",
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