Georgia Congressman Rich McCormick disputed the Trump administration’s approach to investing in the private sector while aligning with its broader low-regulatory regime. Rep. Rich McCormick, R-Ga., said on Monday that the U.S. needs to pursue a free market approach to ensuring a robust and competitive artificial intelligence sector, adding that he was not supportive of the Trump administration’s strategy to purchase ownership stakes in select tech companies.
Speaking during an event at the Hudson Institute, McCormick, a member of the House AI Task Force, said that he isn’t “a big fan” of the federal government acquiring shares of companies, such as Intel, citing unfair market practices that come with federal investment — something Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., also took issue with in early September.
“If you start picking winners and losers because you’re invested in certain companies and not in others, it’s going to basically shoulder out all the most innovative, small companies from becoming competitive, because we as a government will become protectionist of the businesses that we have ownership in,” he said.
McCormick’s stance follows reports of the Trump administration negotiating similar investments in leading quantum computing companies, initially reported by The Wall Street Journal.
Though he did not discuss the 15% of sales the U.S. government is set to get from American chip manufacturers selling their products to China, McCormick reiterated his support of the global diffusion of American AI stack components, underscoring the need to outpace China as the international technology standard.
“We have to be very careful that we don’t market ourselves out of world competition. That’s very important,” he said. “We want to be the industry standard. We want to make sure we’re out in front. We’re able to sell our most basic stuff.”
In addition to the pro-export approach, McCormick supported the Trump administration’s light-touch regulatory regime preference to keep U.S. companies competitive in emerging areas like AI and quantum information science and technology. He also alluded to the need to “right-size” the U.S. immigration policy to continue inviting talent from other countries into the U.S., a point Sen. Mike Rounds, R-S.D., made last week.
“We have people from all over the world wanting to get here with their ideas, develop it, market it. We have tons of wealth. We have all kinds of advantages, but if we aren’t careful, we’ll regulate ourselves into oblivion,” McCormick said. “We have to continue to be Americans, where we allow innovation, we encourage it, that R&D investment, that ability to compete with each other without playing favorites … we have to be aggressively resistant to those things that will put us at a disadvantage.”
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