Last week, the U.S. Department of State released its Agency Strategic Plan for 2026 – 2030. As one would expect, it bears virtually no relation to the longer and more detailed predecessor joint plan of the State Department (and the now defunct US AID agency) under the Biden Administration. It’s not surprising, then, that Its approach to standards development organizations is meaningfully different as well.

Under the prior plan, the importance of working with a broad range of international bodies, including standards setting organizations (SSOs) was stressed. President Trump decisively abandoned that approach in an Executive Order dated January 4, 2026. In that Order, he announced the withdrawal of the United States from thirty-one UN and thirty-five non-UN bodies. Many focused on what the Administration regards as “woke” areas of engagement (e.g., climate change) while others seemed not inconsistent with administration goals (e.g., the Global Counterterrorism Forum and the Global Forum on Cyber Expertise).

In this context, it is interesting to note that the State Department continues to believe in the importance of participating in global standards development – albeit on its own terms. And to be fair, a U.S.-first approach would not be entirely new. During President Biden’s tenure in office, there was concern among a number of vocal legislators that some traditional SSOs as well as some consortia might be unduly influenced by other countries (such as China) or that engagement might be regionally restricted (notably, in Europe). Some stated their belief that standards organizations should be made to reflect “democratic values,” although it was often not clear what this was intended to mean in the context of SSO governance models.

Others expressed concern that China was unilaterally setting its own standards, as well as gaining undue influence by successfully campaigning to secure Chair positions of working groups in important SSOs.

This last concern was given credence in the Joint Strategic Plan of the US Department of State and US AID 2022-2026, which, in a section titled Bolster Multilateral Economic Leadership included the following:

The Department and USAID will strengthen U.S. leadership in international fora through concerted effort to elect leaders and place experts in multilateral and international organizations, particularly in technical bodies charged with standards- and rules-setting responsibilities.

As strategies go, that is a traditional approach that fits within accepted norms of conduct. The new plan, however, announces a new and threatening approach:

…we will focus on increasing American influence and driving reform in organizations whose work affects our concrete national interests, particularly the standard-setting bodies, while imposing real accountability on those who threaten Americans, our national interests, or those of our allies.

The plan does not explain how “accountability” would be “imposed”. The plan is equally determined but more temperate in a later section, stating:

To promote the adoption of U.S.-preferred technology standards, we will exercise strong leadership in international fora by working with partners to advance our preferences and see them adopted.

There is nothing unusual about this approach. Forming coalitions of countries in ISO, IEC and the ITU-T, where representation is at the national level, is hardly new. But the plan again heads off in an entirely new and unusual direction:

We will expect partners using American technology to prefer these standards and will make licenses contingent on support at fora like the International Telecommunications Union.

The new plan does not explain how such an intention would be operationalized. The U.S. does not seek to own and license technology in its own right, nor does it have the right under existing law to control to whom licensing rights under the intellectual property rights policy of an SSO will or will not can be extended.

The U.S. government does have the power to subject technology to export controls, although this power has traditionally been exercised through the Department of Commerce. But trying to link specific technologies to standards developed by specific SSOs seems to be at minimum complex and perhaps not workable at all.

The plan announces another aggressive intention as well:

Where there are weaknesses in international coordination that the United States can strengthen, we will create new fora where we can exercise strong leadership.

The efficacy of setting up rival, competing SSOs is questionable in a legal sense (you can’t force domestic companies to join under existing law, or foreign companies at all). And you can’t force the global marketplace to adopt one standard over another. And even the enormous purchasing power of the U.S. government has historically been unable to force market abandonment of globally adopted standards. That fact is acknowledged in Office of Management and Budget Circular A-119, which acknowledges that agencies will often find it necessary to include standards in procurement criteria that were developed by SSOs that do not meet the preferred requirements found in the Circular.

Most concerning, acting on the intentions revealed in the plan has the potential to completely undermine the global standards development system that has evolved over more than 150 years and upon which the global economy, as well as public health and safety rely. After all – what is to prevent China, or Europe, or both, from taking the same approach (and each has already taken some less radical actions in s similar direction)? If that happens, the golden age of standards as we know it, and all the many benefits we enjoy as a result, will be in great danger indeed.

There is an alternative, and more hopeful, possibility, which is that the more concerning language highlighted above is performative rather than serious. Anyone who has read anything from any source in the current administration knows that channeling the President’s rhetorical style as well as the fundamentals of his policy is the safest way to maintain one’s position. Let’s hope that this was what we are seeing here as well.