Editor’s Note: Although partisans on both sides of the aisle have warned that the stakes of the upcoming presidential election could not be higher, the two campaigns themselves have been remarkably light on policy substance. With Election Day now less than a month away, we reached out to dozens of thinkers, writers, and analysts we trust with a simple question: What are your biggest policy concerns about a potential Trump or Harris administration? We will be publishing their responses—broken up thematically—in the coming days and weeks.
Today’s entry focuses on regulatory policy, which includes topics ranging from the regulation of artificial intelligence, Big Tech, online speech, energy production, and cryptocurrency. Our experts don’t see a lot to like in either candidate’s perceived regulatory approaches, particularly faulting their understanding of how regulation of technology can impede innovation and threaten America’s dominance in that sector.
Trump’s recent embrace of cryptocurrency stands in contrast to Harris’ wariness.
With Election Day just over the horizon, where do Vice President Kamala Harris and former President Donald Trump stand on cryptocurrency policy? Based on available information, a Harris-Walz administration would be unlikely to stray from the Biden-Harris administration. However, Trump has carved out a radically different stance from his previous presidency.
For her part, Harris has left most questions unanswered on the campaign trail. It was only at the end of September when she said, “We will encourage innovative technologies like AI and digital assets while protecting consumers and investors.” Referring to cryptocurrency as digital assets (a common term in government circles), her statement offered little insight into how that plan would work. One proposal appeared in mid-October when her campaign announced support for “a regulatory framework for cryptocurrency and other digital assets so Black men who invest in and own these assets are protected.” Yet, for many people, that seemed to have only prompted more questions.
However, given that Harris later said she would not change a thing about the last four years and that she was part of most of President Joe Biden’s decisions, turning to the Biden-Harris administration’s record may offer some insights. Over the past four years, the administration has repeatedly proposed a 30 percent tax on cryptocurrency miners, called for a central bank digital currency to “crowd out the ecosystem of crypto,” and increasingly pressured banks to deter any involvement with cryptocurrency. This only scratches the surface, but it’s likely these policies will appear again under Harris.
In contrast, Trump has spoken out both in opposition to and in favor of cryptocurrency. “I am not a fan of Bitcoin and other Cryptocurrencies,” he said while in office. On the campaign trail this year, however, Trump paid for food in bitcoin at the bitcoin-themed dive bar known as Pubkey and his family launched its own cryptocurrency platform.
But what about tangible policies? Based on Trump’s recent statements and the 2024 Republican Party platform, the current crackdown is likely to end. In addition to ending everything described above, changes could also include the creation of safeguards for cryptocurrency mining and self-custody options as well as broader measures to strengthen financial privacy and prevent the creation of a central bank digital currency. During his speech at the Bitcoin 2024 Conference, Trump even went so far as to say he would create a strategic bitcoin reserve.
So, where do the two candidates stand? At the moment, it seems Trump is now ready to welcome cryptocurrencies with open arms. Harris, on the other hand, is most likely to continue the crackdown that’s taken place over the last few years. What happens in practice, however, is still yet to be seen.
—Nicholas Anthony, policy analyst at the Cato Institute’s Center for Monetary and Financial Alternatives
Consumers won’t be the focus of a new administration’s tech regulation—and they should be.
Whoever wins the White House, it’s unlikely there’ll be a white horse riding in to uphold the consumer welfare standard or save the country’s most innovative companies from increased antitrust scrutiny. Even the tech industry itself is unsure of who to back in November. That’s because the investigations of Meta, Apple, Amazon, and Google began under the Trump administration and the resulting cases were enthusiastically pursued under President Joe Biden’s Department of Justice (DOJ) and Federal Trade Commission (FTC). Neither Kamala Harris nor Donald Trump has said much about returning to a consumer-focused antitrust approach prizing innovation, and that could wind up hitting Americans’ budgets in the form of higher prices or discouraging innovation.
Despite reports of Harris facing pressure from Democratic donors to ease off antitrust actions against tech companies, including calls to replace champions of antitrust expansion like FTC Chair Lina Khan and DOJ Assistant Attorney General Jonathan Kanter, it’s not clear Harris would do so if elected. Such a course change would infuriate members of her party who have praised Khan’s agency leadership as a bright spot of Biden’s presidency. Harris has not commented on the issue either way, but the perception of easing off Big Tech might be too great a political cost to pay when Khan’s and Kanter’s antitrust policies parallel some price-gouging policy positions Harris has taken publicly.
The outlook for America’s tech industry is no more certain under another Trump administration. Vice presidential nominee Sen. J.D. Vance of Ohio told a Bloomberg technology forum, “I guess I look at Lina Khan as one of the few people in the Biden administration that I think is doing a pretty good job,” in reference to her antitrust work. That’s in conflict with Trump’s promise to shrink the power of the bureaucracy generally, but Trump was an outspoken critic of tech industry leaders while he was in office.
As Harris’ aides claim she’s moving to the middle on many policy issues and Trump remains willing to buck the GOP’s traditional slant toward pro-business policies, America’s tech consumers are not assured of having their interests returned to the heart of U.S. antitrust law under either administration.
—Jessica Melugin, director of the Center for Technology & Innovation at the Competitive Enterprise Institute
Harris seems ill-prepared to foster AI development.
Vice President Kamala Harris has said little of substance about AI. In her acceptance speech at the Democratic National Convention, she remarked that she wanted America to “lead the world on artificial intelligence” and to ensure that China does not “win.” Unfortunately, based on the Biden administration’s track record on AI so far, it is not clear that Harris would support the policies that are required for America to continue leading in AI.
In particular, Harris has expressed deeply questionable risk calculations on AI, remarking that someone whose health care coverage is denied by a “faulty algorithm” is an example of an “existential threat” from AI. The solution to this alleged problem, whose connection to present-day advanced AI systems like ChatGPT is unclear, would presumably be mandates of algorithmic impact assessments for commercial uses of AI. This idea is supported in the Biden administration’s AI Bill of Rights and is mandated for any non-defense government agency use of AI by the administration’s recent Office of Management and Budget guidelines.
Algorithmic impact assessment mandates for government or business use of AI would create massive paperwork burdens for small and large institutions alike, and could easily result in many organizations simply not bothering to use AI, or in widespread government intrusions into economic activity involving AI.
More broadly, though, it is unclear that a Harris administration would have the institutional fortitude to successfully grapple with the challenges associated with advanced AI development. For one thing, building near-future AI systems is likely to require an infrastructure buildout of a scale unprecedented in the last half-century. Massive new multi-gigawatt single supercomputers to train models could be needed; even larger networks of new facilities will be required to serve those models to millions or billions of customers around the world. New semiconductor manufacturing facilities will be needed to supply those data centers. Many gigawatts of new electricity generation infrastructure will have to be built to power it all.
Substantial construction deregulation will be a key part of making any of these things happen. If these facilities are not built in America, they will be built elsewhere.
Former President Donald Trump, for his part, has spoken often of this challenge, and appropriately recognizes it as the most significant near-term AI-related task facing the government. Harris, so far, seems blind to these challenges, instead seemingly content to gesture at 20th century policy ideas like “impact assessments” that have manifestly failed in other domains. AI will likely require the state to move at speeds unseen since Operation Warp Speed’s COVID vaccine development. It is legitimate to wonder whether either presidential candidate can meet the present, but thus far, Harris’ rhetoric gives voters little reason to believe that she appreciates the urgency of adapting to the industrial revolution unfolding before us.
—Dean Ball, research fellow at George Mason University’s Mercatus Center
Tech policy needs to support innovation and respect the First Amendment.
Most of the presumptions about Vice President Kamala Harris’ position on tech policy issues assume they would be a continuation of the Biden administration’s approach. Notably, she was the administration’s “AI czar” as the administration advanced a European-style approach to technology policy, requiring greater government permission and greater government interest in technology development.
This is most clearly laid out in the administration’s executive order on AI that invokes the Defense Production Act to engage in the potential regulation and reporting of AI. Such an approach to a new, general-purpose technology is significantly different from the light-touch approach to regulate prior technologies, like the internet.
A light-touch approach supports innovation and entrepreneurship while a more government-directed and regulatory approach is likely to lead to government support for favored firms, creating a system with which only the largest companies can afford to comply. Further, more regulation could discourage private investment and development in ways that it is difficult to predict.
Other tech policy concerns likely to continue in a Harris administration include those raised about government jawboning of private platforms over the handling of certain content and ,the potential regulation of internet speech either in the name of youth online safety or stemming from concerns about misinformation.
Much of the current “techlash” began during the Trump administration. Notably, while Republicans were previously perceived as favoring smaller government and less intervention, the Trump administration often viewed America’s leading tech companies with animosity, particularly around issues of content moderation.
As such, the possibility of a second Trump administration raises significant concerns that Section 230 and the application of the First Amendment online could come under attack in the name of protecting conservative voices or preventing the deplatforming of individuals. However, such actions could backfire, impacting a far broader set of platforms—like Trump’s own Truth Social—and discouraging social media platforms from carrying controversial views. Such concerns about the potential abuse of government power over disfavored approaches to speech are not limited to only online platforms, with Trump calling to revoke ABC’s license following the September 10 presidential debate.
While Trump may have seen support from some Silicon Valley voices like Elon Musk, many of the ongoing antitrust cases against these companies began during his administration. His vice presidential pick has voiced support for FTC Chair Lina Khan’s aggressive antitrust enforcement and supported efforts to change antitrust law. This indicates a concerning openness to undermining the success of the economic and consumer-focused approach to antitrust enforcement typically supported by free-market Republicans.
While the reasoning behind the desire for regulation may often be at odds with those on the left, there are also likely to be worrying calls for government intervention into online speech and regulation of competition policy from a Trump administration that could impact consumers’ experience of preferred services and continued innovation.
—Jennifer Huddleston, senior fellow in technology policy at the Cato Institute
Both Harris and Trump pose problems for U.S. energy producers.
For very different reasons, the policy outlook for U.S. fossil energy production over the next four years bodes ill given either a Kamala Harris or Donald Trump presidency.
Harris first: Notwithstanding her abandonment of a “ban” on fracking, Harris cannot reverse her long-standing support for climate policies and the preposterous net-zero greenhouse gas emissions goals of the Biden administration. Were she to endorse a substantial expansion of U.S. fossil energy production, her political coalition would be torn apart—the left-wing environmentalists would not stand for it—and the one constant in Harris’ entire political career is a firm determination never to anger the various components of leftist progressivism. Perhaps more to the point: Harris is a true believer in the climate “crisis” and “existential threat” balderdash, and it is naive to believe that she will abandon it.
Accordingly, Harris will unleash the regulators, the net effect of which will be a severe system of explicit and implicit constraints on domestic fossil energy investment and output. Ever-greater subsidies for wind and solar power, expanded by bureaucratic “interpretation” beyond the supposed limits imposed by actual legislative language, will create increasing competitive disadvantages for oil and natural gas production. The restrictions on methane emissions from wellhead operations are expensive and subject to constant tightening, in particular as the bureaucracy justifies such stricter limits on the basis of ever-higher, more artificial, and deeply politicized assumptions about the future economic harm caused by greenhouse gas emissions.
The politicized pause on permitting for liquefied natural gas export facilities will continue, on the basis of whatever shifting justifications serve that end. The same is true for the sharp decline in new leases for fossil energy investment on federal lands, already reduced from 1,841 in 2019 to 144 in 2023; a Harris administration will approve only the bare minimum required by law. Pipeline approvals will slow even more, or end, even though new pipelines are vastly cleaner and safer than old ones. A Harris Environmental Protection Agency will be overjoyed to expand the sue-and-settle litigation racket with left-wing environmentalists, circumventing Congress in a powerful effort to throw ever-more sand in the gears of efficient energy production. In short: Harris claims no longer to support a “ban” on fracking, but there will be a quasi-ban as a de facto reality.
The problems attendant upon a Trump administration are more subtle, but equally destructive. Trump may understand viscerally that fossil energy is an important component of national wealth, and that the efficient production of more of it is the appropriate goal, but his deep preference for tariffs, other protectionist tools, and a dollar made artificially strong will impose severe constraints on his “energy dominance” agenda.
The tariffs and protectionism will increase input costs for fossil producers sharply. The artificially strong dollar will reduce foreign demand for U.S. exports and thus the prices that domestic energy producers are able to command internationally, and even that ignores the adverse effects of retaliation by foreign governments certain to follow. Domestic fossil energy prices too will decline because of the attendant decline in exports.
The upshot of Trump’s cluelessness about the inconsistencies between his fossil energy goals and his stances on U.S. trade policy is a far less favorable policy and economic environment for domestic fossil energy investment and output than commonly asserted by Trump supporters.
Harris or Trump: The next four years are unlikely to prove salutary for domestic energy producers.
—Benjamin Zycher, senior fellow in energy and environmental policy at the American Enterprise Institute
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