America Wants a Slice of AI: Trump and Sanders, Sworn Enemies, Find Themselves on the Same Ground

There are moments in politics when ideological distances narrow until they nearly disappear, and what is happening in the United States around artificial intelligence is one of those moments. Donald Trump, during a press conference held aboard Air Force One in the first days of June 2026, declared that the White House is evaluating a concrete proposal: ensuring that American citizens receive a share of the profits generated by major artificial intelligence companies. "The American public could become a kind of partner of the companies," the president said, using words that, until a few weeks ago, no one would ever have imagined coming from his mouth.

Yet that same idea had been put forward just days earlier by Bernie Sanders, senator from Vermont and longtime standard-bearer of the American progressive left, who proposed a similar measure as part of a broader debate on redistributing the wealth generated by automation and AI. Sanders' proposal started from a precise premise: if artificial intelligence is destined to replace significant portions of human labor and to produce trillions of dollars of economic value, then there is no sense in that wealth concentrating exclusively in the hands of a small group of technology companies. A linear argument, almost obvious in its simplicity, but one that until now struggled to find space in the American political mainstream.

The fact that Trump is now asking the same question, albeit with different motivations and language, changes the nature of the debate. This is no longer a niche battle waged by left-wing activists, but a question that cuts across the entire American political spectrum. According to reporting by several American media outlets, including Axios and Politico, which have closely followed the presidential declarations, the White House has not yet formalized a legislative proposal, but the fact that the topic is being discussed openly aboard Air Force One suggests it is gaining concrete shape.

The context in which this debate unfolds is that of a vertigo-inducing AI market expansion. According to estimates from the International Monetary Fund published in 2024 and updated throughout 2025, artificial intelligence could contribute up to 7 trillion dollars to global GDP over the next ten years. McKinsey Global Institute, in a report released in late 2024, estimated that between 40 and 50 percent of current work tasks could be automated by 2030. Enormous numbers that make it urgent to answer the underlying question: who will benefit from this transformation?

The proposals on the table vary in form and depth. There is talk of sovereign funds into which equity stakes of major tech companies would flow, of dividends distributed to citizens along the lines of Alaska's Permanent Fund, of new forms of taxation on AI profits to be redistributed through social programs. None of these ideas has yet become law, but the simple fact that they are being discussed by Trump and Sanders within the same span of weeks is already a powerful political signal.

What is emerging, beyond party labels and public declarations, is a growing awareness: artificial intelligence is not merely a technological question. It is an economic, social, and political question of the first magnitude. And the battle to decide who will own the wealth that AI creates could be, as MIT economist Daron Acemoglu wrote in an essay published in Foreign Affairs in 2025, "the most important distributional conflict of the twenty-first century." A conflict that, paradoxically, is beginning to unite sworn enemies.

Sources: Donald Trump's statements aboard Air Force One, June 2026; Senator Bernie Sanders' proposals, May-June 2026; International Monetary Fund, World Economic Outlook 2024-2025; McKinsey Global Institute, "The Future of Work in the Age of AI", 2024; Daron Acemoglu, "The Wrong Kind of AI", Foreign Affairs, 2025.