Is AI the exception to ‘America First’?

President Donald Trump's AI Action Plan is very much in line with Trump’s swaggering, chest-puffing attitude toward foreign policy. It took an “America first” approach that rhetorically paralleled the administration’s punishing tariff threats, withdrawal from “woke” UNESCO and drive-by references to “the evil of globalism.” But packed into the AI plan’s pages is a pivot: a call to forge “an enduring global alliance” on the technology. The plan calls for the State and Commerce departments to leverage the U.S. position in international bodies — it names the United Nations, the OECD, G7, G20 and the International Telecommunication Union, among others — to advocate standards and governance approaches that “reflect American values.”