US President Donald Trump speaks during an announcement with Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) Administrator Lee Zeldin in the Oval Office of the White House in Washington, DC on May 21, 2026. <\/p>\n
Kent Nishimura | AFP | Getty Images<\/p>\n
President Donald Trump<\/a> on Thursday said he postponed<\/a> an upcoming signing ceremony for his administration’s much-anticipated executive order on the artificial intelligence<\/a> industry.<\/p>\n The event, which was set for later Thursday afternoon, was delayed “because I didn’t like certain aspects of it,” Trump told reporters in the Oval Office.<\/p>\n The U.S. is ahead of China<\/a> and the rest of the world on AI and “I don’t want to do anything that’s going to get in the way of that lead,” Trump said.<\/p>\n He added that AI is “causing tremendous good,” and he was concerned that the executive order “could have been a blocker.”<\/p>\n The order would empower the U.S. government to pre-evaluate AI models to identify security vulnerabilities, The New York Times reported<\/a> Thursday, citing people working on the order.<\/p>\n The postponement was first reported earlier Thursday by Axios<\/a>. The White House referred CNBC to Trump’s remarks when asked for comment on the delay.<\/p>\n Tech giants’ massive investments in the nascent AI industry have fueled rapid growth<\/a>, helping drive stock markets to new heights even as the Iran war and other sources of geopolitical strife have caused global economic turmoil.<\/p>\n The AI-friendly<\/a> Trump administration has welcomed the shift toward the technology and taken actions supported by industry leaders, such as backing their calls to preempt states<\/a> from setting their own AI rules.<\/p>\n But the administration has also taken some steps toward greater AI oversight: The federal Center for AI Standards and Innovation this month announced agreements<\/a>\u00a0with\u00a0Google<\/a>\u00a0DeepMind,\u00a0Microsoft<\/a>\u00a0and\u00a0Elon Musk’s<\/a>\u00a0xAI letting it evaluate\u00a0AI models before they are publicly available.<\/p>\n