Trump's Tariff Policies Are Harming Innovation: CTA Chief
Consumer Technology Association CEO Gary Shapiro waited until the end of his comments at CES on Tuesday to criticize Trump administration trade policies, while other speakers explained why AI is dominating the annual tech show and why it’s important to industry and consumers. Nearly all the keynotes at the conference this week are focused, at least in part, on AI.
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Shapiro said that around the world, government policies are either accelerating innovation or slowing it. “I’ll be the bad guy,” he said. “Here’s what’s not working -- trade restrictions and shifting tariffs.” He warned against “policies that are shaped by fear instead of facts and mandates [based] on design instead of performance.”
“All of this creates confusion and uncertainty and stifles innovation,” Shapiro added. Governments should set “clear, big goals” and establish “clear guardrails that minimize uncertainty and litigation and let innovators and consumers figure out the rest.”
“This year at CES, AI is everywhere,” said CTA President Kinsey Fabrizio, who appeared onstage with Shapiro. She cited the use of AI in health care, including “early disease detecting and personalized medicine,” as well as robotics, “smarter, safer mobility” and “accessibility breakthroughs.” Hitachi’s digital asset management platform is also “using AI to monitor railroad systems, helping keep critical infrastructure safer, more reliable and more efficient.”
What stands out in 2026 “is how tangible all of this feels,” Fabrizio added.
AI is defining the next generation of technology, “and it’s doing it faster than anything we’ve seen before,” Shapiro said, noting that he uses AI “to get smart quickly, especially on dense issues,” to make buying decisions and “think through decisions in business and in life.” AI is “basically a research assistant that helps me cut down the time it takes to actually figure things out.”
But AI also presents challenges, Shapiro said. “Let’s be honest here”: When people discuss AI, they’re thinking about their own jobs and those of their children. “What skills will matter in the future?” he asked. “What opportunities will exist?”
AI is “really coming to consumers,” said Qualcomm CEO Cristiano Amon, who also spoke Tuesday. AI agents are changing every consumer device, he said, with watches, glasses, jewelry and everything people wear becoming “smart” and connecting to AI agents. He predicted that the new category of AI devices “is going to be massive” and as big as mobile phones are today.
Amon also said 6G will be “all about AI,” as the network will be able to “understand the context” of everything that’s being connected to it. “We’re just at the beginning,” he said. “This is going to be a decades-long process.”
'Genesis Mission'
During a keynote address Monday night, Advanced Micro Devices CEO Lisa Su was joined onstage by Michael Kratsios, director of the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy, to discuss President Donald Trump’s “Genesis Mission.” The initiative, released in November, is designed to speed the progress of science and AI.
Kratsios compared Genesis to the Apollo mission and the Manhattan Project, which led to the first nuclear bomb. “We are bringing together the unmatched power of our national laboratories, supercomputers and the nation’s top scientific and innovative minds, with the goal of doubling the productivity and impact of American science within a decade.”
The U.S. needs to remove “barriers to innovation” and accelerate research and development, Kratsios said. The administration has “taken significant” actions to streamline the permitting of data centers and make energy available to power the centers, he added.